


dreams they break in the morning light

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Amnesia, Did I mention angst, Eames does stupid shit, Established Relationship, M/M, Mal's wisdom is infinite, Unresolved Sexual Tension, all in the name of love, boat loads of angst, who knew Eames could be so damn sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2474090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur forgets and Eames tries to make him remember, finding that two years is at once infinite and nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to write an amnesia fic and finally decided the idea has festered for long enough. A bit, just a bit like The Vow, which I can shamelessly say I enjoyed, okay. And I apologize in advance-ish for putting Eames through hell, poor bb.

It takes him thirty-one years to define happiness, to give it a shape and snatch it up before the chance passed him by, like chances tend to do. 

It takes the universe three minutes to take it away from him, as if it was never his to keep. To teach him a lesson in humility, maybe. To remind him that he’s neither singular nor deserving; he’s simply insignificant.

And he remembers. He remembers his father’s advice to a thirteen-year-old boy still seeking approval from the one person incapable of giving it. _Life is pain, my boy. Anyone who says differently is selling something._

*

“Mal will never forgive us.” Arthur lets his head fall back against the seat, displaying the long pale line of his throat and making Eames’s fingers twitch against the steering wheel.

They leisurely wind their way west towards the cliffs, seeking the sea. Eames can already smell it, the pure tang that cleanses his lungs of city living.

“I think she’ll be perfectly understanding.”

“She laid out linens on my desk, Eames. Linens. On my desk.”

Truth be told, he’d found Arthur’s bewilderment hilarious and Mal’s talents impressive. Because, really, how often does one meet a woman who can field strip a Beretta in four seconds, and knows the difference between damask and taffeta.

“Good point. We’re fucked.”

He feels Arthur’s eyes on him, the weight of them warm and thrilling, like what they have between them is new, unexplored.

“I get the feeling you’re not taking this seriously.”

“Darling,” he slips his hand off the shifter to find Arthur’s and threads their fingers together, brushing against the wedding band with his thumb, “I’m quite seriously in love with you.”

“That’ll do,” comes after a long pause, and it’s Arthur’s way of saying that Eames has him, forever, if it exists.

*

The hospital calls at two in the afternoon. The story is the biker appeared out of nowhere, out of the taxi’s blind spot. The story is he flew twenty feet and would’ve died instantly if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

Eames fists his poker chip until it cuts into his palm and still he’s not convinced.

While his French has never been impeccable like Arthur’s, it’s served him well enough. At the hospital, filled with the sick and the dying, their suffering palpable, the language becomes sounds removed from meaning. It takes him three tries to understand that Arthur’s still in surgery and he has to wait. _Attendez. Attendez, s’il vous plait._

So he waits, in a corridor with expansive windows that face the Seine. He can see the strip of still water embracing the _quai_ , sapped of color under an overcast sky. He waits and stares, passing his poker chip through his fingers, over and under then back again, until a hand touches his shoulder. Mal, who came as quickly as she could, leaving Cobb to watch the children.

“He’s a survivor.” 

It’s true they’ve been through this before, more times than would be considered normal, but they’ve always rejected normalcy. Eames knows what it’s like to have Arthur’s blood staining his cuffs, to break Arthur’s arm so they could salvage a job gone to shit, to feel Arthur’s dead weight over his shoulder, still as a corpse. So maybe it’s the irony that gets to him, the unfamiliarity of something so utterly mundane as a bicycling accident that takes his breath away.

Time becomes a nonlinearity within those walls, progressing at an unpredictable, ever changing pace. The sounds of footfalls and murmured conversation swirl in the sterile, stagnant air. Mal periodically rests her hand on his knee but doesn’t speak, knowing he’s far away from her. Poised on the edge of a cliff looking out across a rippled gradient of turquoise and ultramarine.

When the surgeon appears, he stands abruptly, sloshing lukewarm coffee over his hand.

“He’s in stable condition but it may be a few more hours before he wakes. He suffered a cerebral contusion, highly common in head trauma patients, but we were able to control the bleeding and relieve the intracranial pressure.”

“And when he wakes?” Eames wonders if he’s being selfish, wishing for Arthur to be exactly as he saw him last, sharp eyes, quick mouth, giving into laughter only when it’s truly deserved.

“As with all injuries to the temporal lobe, there’s a chance of mental and emotional impairment. In most cases it’s temporary, but you should be prepared in any case. Doctor Olsson will come by for a follow-up.”

So he returns to waiting, to Mal smiling with a bit more encouragement, and he feels the fear easing deceptively, like frostbite settling into his extremities.

Doctor Olsson is a tall, lean man with thick grey hair and a professorial look about him, round spectacles perched at the end of his nose.

“His vitals are good, and he’s quite lucid.” He leads them down the corridor, deeper into the hospital. “He has no memory of the accident, but that’s common. He may be a little emotionally unstable over the recovery period, so just be patient.”

He opens the door to Arthur’s room and Eames steps through, hands fidgeting against his thighs. Arthur’s seated upright on the bed, pale and exhausted, edges lacking conviction but still beautifully defined.

“Eames.” 

It’s a stilted sound that doesn’t fit properly in Arthur’s mouth. A foreign sound that accompanies the confusion on Arthur’s face, and Eames knows something’s wrong.

“What are you doing here? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Eames walks to the edge of the bed and sits, feeling the fear kick in, the sickening adrenaline shooting straight to his heart. He rests his left hand next to Arthur’s instead of taking it, and keeps his right hand on his thigh instead of raising it to Arthur’s face.

“What do you remember?” He asks even though he already knows. He’s always been adept at parsing human emotion, and with Arthur he’s made it into a bloody art form. 

He knows this isn’t the Arthur he married. In fact, it’s the Arthur he met two years ago, on a Merseyside dock under a sky of monochrome grey that matched his suit. Eames had tried to get him to smile, and he’d been having none of it.

“Liverpool. I went stateside after that, and then—” Arthur blinks like he’s reached a wall, smooth and infinite on all sides.

“You don’t remember Bogotá?” Eames presses in when he knows he should be backing off. He searches fastidiously for a nuance, a microexpression to assure him the memories aren’t gone, just hidden. “We met again in Bogotá. And again in Mombasa.”

Mombasa was the moment Arthur started to relent, the catalyst for his slow unraveling in exquisite threads that Eames wound tenderly around his fingers over the course of eighteen months.

Arthur shakes his head slowly, dropping his head, and it’s then that he sees their hands spread side by side, platinum bands of identical detailing and width, gleaming.

“Eames.” All of a sudden his voice is low, composed, and dangerous, the way it is when he threatens—ready to disarm if he’s given the choice and kill if he isn’t. “What the hell is going on.”

“Arthur,” and then Eames stops. It sounds all wrong, discomfited, like they’re bloody acquaintances sharing a lift, so he tries again, taking Arthur’s hand this time, because maybe it’s all the encouragement he needs to remember. “Liverpool was two years ago, love. We’re married now.”

For a moment Arthur lets his hand be held, eyes wide and dark, and Eames lets himself imagine that Arthur’s just woken up, self-awareness returning to the spaces vacated by the dream. 

And then everything goes to hell. 

Arthur’s out of his bed and pinning Eames to the wall with one arm pressed against his throat, the other against his chest, faster even than Eames would’ve anticipated given the circumstances, and Eames is well acquainted with Arthur’s instinct for self-preservation.

“Tell me what sick game you’re playing, right now, or I swear to God I will tear you limb from fucking limb.” 

Arthur’s body heat, the smell of him, bears down on Eames and all he can think about is the morning of the accident, sunlight bending across the bed, Arthur stretching as he woke, limbs haphazard and sheets twisted around his thighs, turning to Eames with a look of naked affection.

“I’m counting to three, Mr. Eames.” His arm twitches against Eames’s throat. “One, two, th—”

“Three months ago we took a job in Beijing, helping a businessman find a little political leverage. A rags-to-riches story, really tugged on the heartstrings.” The pressure eases a little, out of curiosity if nothing else. “Cobb and Mal were otherwise preoccupied so we assembled a new team at the last minute. Turned out the extractor was in deep with a bookie and stood to gain a hell of a lot more by selling us out.”

Eames quiets for a moment, thrown by how the fear still cripples him. 

“They had you on your knees with a gun to your head. I saw them pulling the trigger, I _saw_ it, and the only reason why they didn’t shoot was because a car outside bloody backfired. When we made it out of there, I had this moment of perfect clarity. I knew that while rejection would be unbearable, regret was infinitely worse. So as we rounded Tiananmen Square on a pair of stolen bicycles, I asked you to marry me.”

Arthur stares at him, eyes unblinking and a little startled. Heat accumulates steadily in the narrow space between them.

“You called me an idiot, and then you said yes. Even though you took every opportunity to declare marriage a failing institution, you still said yes.”

Arthur swallows, mouth parted, breaths erratic, and then lets Eames go without warning, backpedaling until his legs hit the bed. He squeezes his eyes shut, swaying slightly, cheeks losing the little color they had, and Eames is about to lunge forward, catch him in freefall, when his eyes fly open.

“It’s a dream. I’m dreaming, I must be dreaming. Where’s my die? My totem, I don’t have it, _where the fuck is it_?”

Eames has seen Arthur agitated and flustered, mildly panicked _once_ , but never hysterical like this, composure all but wrecked, and for a second he has no fucking clue what to do.

Then the door flies open.

“What in God’s name is going on in here? Why is he out of bed?”” Olsson’s pulled off his glasses, eyebrows drawn tightly. “Mr. Smith, you just underwent a craniotomy, you must _lie down_. And Mr. Brown, I’ll have to ask you to leave. You can return when visiting hours resume tomorrow.”

Arthur still looks a little frantic, fragile, and Eames wants to drive his fist through the wall because at least the brute force, the point of impact he can control. Instead, he drags a hand over his face and presses it against his mouth.

“I’ll find it,” he promises Arthur before walking out.

Mal’s wringing her hands in the corridor, eyes troubled, but he just brushes past, pulling at his hair then rubbing at the back of his neck, feeling the frustration burn up his oxygen more quickly than he can take it in. He remembers Arthur’s threat, the way Arthur looked at him in that room like he meant _nothing_ , and then he’s slamming his palms against the wall, fingers curling impotently, eyes squeezed shut. The pain liberates him for just a moment, chaos subsiding before erupting again.

“Eames, _Eames_.” 

Mal rests a hand on his back and murmurs his name by his ear, over and over again until he remembers how to breathe.

*

The day is gloomy and grey, shadowed persistently by low-hanging clouds heavy with moisture. Gulls circle the water’s edge and settle on the metal posts by the quayside, still and vigilant, before flying off again. 

Eames lights a smoke and watches the American consider his offer. He takes a slow, hedonistic drag, eyes wandering, _indulging_ , and thinks Mal truly put one over on him this time. She’s always had a profound, occasionally terrifying, talent for scheming and, oh, what a lovely scheme he is, all dark eyes, pale skin, and fluid lines, the _pièce de résistance_ of a scrupulous minimalist. Which isn’t to say this Arthur without a surname is simple. In fact, Eames, who has a profound, often terrifying, talent for reading people like a open book, finds Arthur frustratingly opaque.

“Why didn’t Mal come to me herself?” Arthur narrows his eyes, as if the tables are turned and he can see right through Eames.

“She would if she could, darling, but we’re on a bit of a tight schedule.” The endearment falls into place almost too easily, but Arthur’s delightfully flustered face makes the slip well worth it. “She holds my powers of persuasion in high regard.”

Arthur recovers quickly as he leans against the railing, eyebrows raised and arms crossed over his ridiculously well-fitted overcoat.

“Then persuade me, Mr. Eames,” he challenges, mouth unyielding, and Eames decides that he’s inevitably done for.

*

Arthur says nothing on the ride home from hospital, shoulder pressed against the door of the cab, face turned to the window. His taut lines tell Eames to keep his distance, and so he does, hands tight around his thighs so he’s not tempted to reach over, to palm Arthur’s neck and soothe his tension.

When they pass over the Seine, Arthur raises his fingertips to the glass.

“You—We—” he starts and stops, and finally settles on, “Île Saint-Louis?”

He turns to Eames, a little dazzled by what he sees, and Eames just smiles, imagining, easily, that those eyes are meant for him. Then Arthur turns back to admire the view, the glow of dwindling daylight coloring stone façades a warm, muted ochre. 

Eames knows he used to dream about living here, being able to witness the shimmer of city lights on the river just by walking out onto his balcony. Eames was the one who found the flat, who signed the papers in a single afternoon and kept Arthur blindfolded until they walked through the door.

This time when they get to the flat, Arthur stops after crossing the threshold, frowning slightly, limbs restless.

“Look, I know we talked about this, and the doctor said it might help me—remember things, but,” he slides a hand over the back of his neck, diverting his eyes, “this isn’t—I don’t think it’s gonna work.”

Eames just stares at him for a moment, feeling like whatever blunt, rusty object has been embedded in his heart the last few days is twisting cruelly now, and trying to decide what’s driving it deeper, Arthur’s obvious discomfort or the uncertainty that makes him look out of his depth and entirely too young.

Then Eames expels a breath and scrubs his hand through his hair, closing his eyes briefly. 

“Just stay the night, all right? You can have the bed, or the guestroom, whichever you want. I’ll stay out of your way.” At this point he’s prepared to do anything to keep Arthur here, to keep him. “Please.” 

He holds his breath until Arthur relents, minutes later, or maybe hours; time still isn’t moving at a pace he recognizes.

“All right. Okay.” 

They walk down the corridor into the living room and as soon as Arthur sees the interior, he inhales sharply.

“This is—” he steps forward, drinking in the sight of expansive double-glazed windows, clean shades of white and grey, and austere lines softened by rich oak paneling. “Lovely.”

“You insisted on choosing the furniture, so I chose the art.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “Post-impressionism? Considering your god awful taste in clothes and architecture, I am pleasantly surprised.”

The corners of his mouth turn up, dimples starting to show, and Eames feels a spike of _want_ in his gut, visceral and familiar. Arthur must see it in his eyes instantly, heat unfurling, darkening his irises, because he takes an abrupt step back, shoulders rigid as if he’ll gladly throw Eames to the floor if he’s given the right incentive. And for a second Eames is sorely tempted to give it; it’s not like they haven’t broken furniture before. For a second he wants to grab Arthur, patience be damned, and kiss him bloody senseless, remind him he always gives as good as he gets. 

Instead Eames smiles, a little ruefully, and swallows. 

“My tastes are versatile, darling.” It’s not meant to sound provocative or insolent, and he can tell Arthur knows this, too, if not understands or remembers. It encapsulates everything that’s unfolded since Liverpool, the glorious, soaring trajectory of Eames’s downfall. _Darling_.

Arthur turns away, toward the windows and the river beyond them, like he belongs anywhere but here. His hand is in his pocket, fumbling, and Eames knows he’s palming his die, still not entirely convinced that he’s woken up.

“You should rest.”

“I’ll take the guestroom.”

It’s been furnished, though never occupied, colored in soothing shades of taupe, single window looking out onto the courtyard.

“Your clothes are—”

“Can you—can I just have a minute?” Arthur looks unsteady on his feet, face drawn, breaths a little shallow, like he might have a panic attack, and instead of leaving, Eames steps closer. “One fucking minute, all right, Eames?”

His thinly-veiled anger makes Eames stiffen, curling his hands into fists then uncurling them, before he turns on his heels and shuts the door behind him. He heads straight to the balcony, snatching up his cigarettes on the way, hands shaking so hard it takes him three tries to light one. He lets the nicotine soak into his bloodstream before he rings Mal.

“I can’t take it. He’s going to give me a bloody aneurysm.”

“So what else is new?” He can hear Mal’s smile, lovely and infectious, and his heart slows to a pace he can almost stand.

“You know this is different.”

Mal pauses, and he rests his elbows on the railing, flicking ashes to the wind.

“I can’t imagine how hard it must be, Eames. But what choice do you have?”

He doesn’t respond because he knows he has none. He never did where Arthur was concerned.

“You fight for the ones you love, Eames. You fight to deserve them.”

At that he takes a wet, trembling breath. “I hope Cobb tells you every fucking day how brilliant you are.”

“In his own way.” Her laugh makes him think for a second that this could be easy. “Have faith, my dear. _À cœur vaillant rien d’impossible_. Arthur and I are meeting for coffee tomorrow. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

He leaves the balcony feeling more settled, cautiously optimistic, and then, predictably, it all goes to shit when he sees Arthur, standing with his back to the door. Towel wrapped low around his hips, water dripping from his hair to slide down the back of his neck then between his shoulder blades, muscles contracting and lengthening as he pulls on a soft cotton shirt, _Eames’s_ bloody soft cotton shirt, clearly unaware that whatever boundaries he’s tried to delineate between their clothes Eames has ignored with pleasure. 

And Eames just runs in the other direction, shutting himself in their room, sitting on the edge of their bed, and resting his head in his hands until he cobbles together his composure, fucking terrified of how close it already is to being irreparable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Life is pain, my boy. Anyone who says differently is selling something_ , I credit to the incomparable William Goldman.
> 
>  _À cœur vaillant rein d’impossible_ translates into something like, nothing is impossible to a willing heart.


	2. Chapter 2

More often than not Eames’s job involves sitting in a stuffy office, listening to stuffy men drone on about taxes, intellectual property, antitrust, dull things that would render him comatose if he weren’t so good at what he does.

Turns out Mombasa is quite the opposite of dull. Mombasa hands him a glittering opportunity on a silver platter. A charity gala that not only requires the right kind of references, but also the right kind of date. _Accomplice_ , if he wants to be professional about it, but he’s rather unapologetically not. 

Mal is pregnant, Cobb is busy building, rebuilding, perfecting, so that leaves Arthur. And Arthur never disappoints. In fact, he exceeds expectations, showing up to the warehouse in a _tailcoat_ , looking like bloody Fred Astaire, and Eames thinks that whatever propriety he has left will surely go to hell before the night is through.

“Nice girls don’t feel the way I do,” he says, a little foolishly, when he meets Arthur halfway.

Arthur looks at him curiously, and then oddly, blinking slowly at his black bow tie and silk lapels, mouth parting on an inhale.

“You clean up—nicely.”

“Your notoriously hard-won approval is, as always, much appreciated,” Eames takes one more step so that their wingtips touch, “darling.”

They should be leaving but he can’t really be bothered to care, not when he can so easily reach out to take what he wants and Arthur looks as though he might let Eames try.

*

He wakes up to the sound of Arthur’s screams. 

It takes him a second to orient himself, and then he’s falling out of bed, stumbling to the guestroom, and yanking the door open, so hard he hears something splinter. 

Arthur’s curled on his side, sheets twisted around his legs, hair damp against his forehead, and Eames takes his face with one hand, catching a flailing arm with the other.

“Arthur. Arthur, _wake up_.”

Arthur’s eyes fly open, chest heaving, straining to accommodate wet, shuddering breaths.

“Eames,” is all he says, in a small, wrecked voice, and Eames is climbing into bed, curling around him from chest to knees and splaying one hand over his heart to contain its wild, nauseating rhythm. 

“It’s all right, love, stay with me,” Eames reassures against the shell of Arthur’s ear, feeling the trembling subside little by little. “You were dreaming, only dreaming.”

He murmurs nonsense until he’s certain Arthur’s fallen back asleep, and then he’s much too tired, too contently stretched along Arthur’s heat to leave.

When he wakes, daylight is already spilling through the curtains, warm and diffuse over his shoulder. He shifts his weight a little, then finds that Arthur flipped over sometime during the night. He’s curled toward Eames now, limbs pliant, mouth soft, and face beautifully unguarded. And in that moment it’s as though their lives have resumed, ever so quietly, with nothing to suggest that they were ever disrupted. 

Eames reaches out to brush his knuckles against an exposed cheek, and, slowly, Arthur’s eyes open, hazy with sleep.

“Eames.” This time the sound of his name is low, a little rough, and unconsciously intimate, and it’s all he can do to keep from pinning Arthur to the bed, straddling his thighs, and dragging a tongue indulgently along the curve of his jaw.

Eames pulls his hand away when Arthur’s eyes focus, but resolutely stays where he is, mapping the minute shifts of emotion across Arthur’s face. Surprise, followed closely by embarrassment, unease, and finally settling into the blank slate that Arthur considers so essential to his self-preservation.

He rises abruptly, swinging his legs over the edge and planting his palms flat on the bed, back stiff.

“Sorry. About last night. You didn’t have to—” He cuts himself off, as if even with those memories lost he has enough sense to figure out that of course Eames had to bloody well do it. That Eames will be there to tether him to reality for as long as he feels it drifting away from him. “Sorry.”

Eames rolls onto his back and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, wanting Arthur to stop apologizing, to turn around, to _look_ at him and try for one fucking second to suspend his disbelief, that it was Eames who ended up being the bloody love of his life.

“What time is it?” His internal clock is usually reliable down to the minute but he feels disoriented, waking up in this room with the morning light hitting the wall at an entirely different angle than he’s used to. 

“Nine forty— _shit_. Mal.” 

Arthur scrambles up and out of the room while Eames stays perfectly still, eyes firmly shut, until he hears the front door opening and closing. Then he proceeds to drag himself out of bed, throw on some clothes that need a wash, and leave a note on the counter, just in case Arthur gets back first.

He starts his run down Pont de la Tournelle, syncing his breaths to his cadence. The June air is crisp, sweet with the scent of honey locusts, and a welcome balm for the dull, Arthur-induced ache in his head. He picks up speed down the Quai, narrowing his awareness to the pounding of his feet against the pavement, the momentum of his arms, physiological minutiae he can calculate with certainty.

It takes him no time at all to reach Île de la Cité, and Notre Dame looming at its edge, a glorious gothic menace with its leering gargoyles and cavernous arches. Arthur would point out the tracery dividing the rose windows, the sculpted trumeaux, the functionality of the buttresses, all the while gesticulating with those elegant, tireless hands of his.

Without him, Eames sees only history. Some dead, some living, but mostly his own. His parents’ short-lived attempt at raising him Catholic, succeeding insofar as he learned precisely how to direct his irreverence. Their damning silence as he committed one transgression after another with an utter lack of repentance. His father’s warnings that he’d burn in hell, though never in so many words.

He crosses the river and stops between the two towers, staring up at their symmetry until the lines start to waver, dream-like. Physics no longer constant, but fluid. 

It’s only when someone jostles his shoulder that he realizes he’s surrounded by people. Couples strolling arm in arm, parents restraining their hyperactive children. A man stands at his ten o’clock reading a pamphlet, messenger bag slung across his body. He bears just enough resemblance to Arthur that Eames watches him for a moment, the long fingers curved around the paper, dark hair curling at the nape. He imagines it’s the man Arthur could’ve been if he’d gone off to college instead of joining the army, if he’d settled for normalcy, if he’d never met Eames.

And then Eames is turning and running, back across the river and down the Quai, until he’s hunched in front of their door, gripping the frame with both hands. He breathes in short, shallow gasps as he rides out the fear, waits for the undertow to drag and ebb across his heart.

The flat is empty when he walks in, soundless save for the ticking of the Comtoise clock they bought at the flea market because Arthur has a soft spot for antiques and Eames a soft spot for anything with a bit of character. He crumples the note on the counter before heading to the shower, leaving a trail of clothes across the bedroom floor, then standing under the spray until the heat loosens the spaces in his chest.

When he returns to the kitchen, Arthur’s there, frowning at the French press with his hands flat against the countertop, Oxford rolled to his elbows. Corners tucked, lines pressed, with no indication he'd ever been in danger of coming apart.

“Glaring won’t make it brew any faster, love.” 

Arthur tenses subtly, equilibrium perturbed only for the length of time it takes Eames to reach him.

“I’m _glaring_ because it’s decaf. Why is there only decaf in the pantry?”

When he turns, his eyes drop to Eames’s bare chest, conviction wavering as they make a slow, torturous ascent to his clavicle, and then the hollow of his throat. It’s a moment of weakness that’s just begging to be exploited, and Eames is a man who rarely, if ever, misses a window of opportunity, however small. Yet he lets this one pass him by, because if Arthur’s taught him anything, it’s that his morals aren’t nearly as loose as he thought they were.

“You’ve been trying to limit your caffeine intake. After Glasgow—” Then he remembers it means little to Arthur now, not much more than a dot on a map, and he thinks it’s not quite the time or place to expound on Glasgow. “Let’s just say you’ll never let Cobb do reconnaissance, or order quadruple shots of anything ever again.”

Arthur’s mouth twitches, eyes still a little distracted by Eames’s proximity.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Now there’s a first,” Eames murmurs, thinking that if Arthur keeps looking at him like this he’ll have no choice but to kiss him, thoroughly, to make up for all the lost time.

And then Arthur’s turning away to reach for the coffee, making sure as he retreats that Eames can’t follow.

*

The Shelby GT’s parked at the curb when they round the corner, and Eames would call it divine intervention if he believed in that sort of thing. Sleek, glistening black, dramatic red striping, hard, timeless lines. His fingers are already itching.

“Looks like we’ve found ourselves a ride.”

They slow to a stop and Arthur raises his eyebrows, curiosity winning out over skepticism because he knows by now that Eames never offers what he can’t deliver.

“I’m sorry, clarify _found_.”

Eames runs a gentle hand along her body and tries to remember how long it’s been.

“It’s been years, hasn’t it, love, but you haven’t changed one bit.”

“Eames, you’re freaking me out.”

He circles the Shelby, giving her a fond once-over, before coming round to Arthur again.

“You know those rebellious teenage years? You get high, pierce your tongue, skive off school, join a death metal band. I, on the other hand, stole cars. Took me a few tries to perfect, a run-in or two with the Met, but the thrill was always intoxicating, more powerful than any drug.” He walks forward until he’s crowding Arthur against the door, one palm against the glass. “I liked them in all shapes and sizes, but she was a favorite of mine. 4.6 litre V8 engine, 319 base horsepower, 330 newton-metres of torque, zero to sixty in under five seconds.”

By the time he finishes, Arthur’s pupils are dilated, lips damp and parted, and he thinks about how he’s lived his life trading in one dangerous habit for another.

*

“A job, Mal? A fucking job?” He leans on the balcony, flicking his cigarette with more violence than necessary because he knows there’s no kicking the habit now.

“You know Arthur when he sets his mind on something. There’s no reasoning with him.”

Mal sounds resigned, and Eames wills himself to take a few cleansing breaths. She’s always given into Arthur too easily, but he’d be a hypocrite for faulting her. He’s well aware that when Arthur wants something, he doesn’t lay it on thick; he just implores with those eyes of his and it’s bloody magical.

“I think he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress.” He takes another long, unsteady drag, blowing out the smoke in the direction of the wind.

“ _Merde_. Are you sure?”

“Well, I’m not a bloody psychologist, but he screamed himself awake in the middle of the night, which I take as not a good sign.”

He can hear her pacing, rhythmic padding of bare feet across the floorboards, and he turns to watch Arthur through the French doors, stretched out on the sofa reading Dante’s _Divine Comedy_.

“Maybe a job is a good thing then. To keep him distracted. God knows he gets a little stir crazy when he goes for more than a week with nothing to do.”

Kabul taught them that. Twenty straight days of lying low in close quarters, making sure the ABP hadn't flagged their passports. Arthur had been implacable and Eames in constant fear he'd go off and get himself arrested or blown to bits by an IED. 

“So, Mombasa.”

“Just like old times.”

It turns out to be a smash-and-grab sort of job, for a man with a lot of net worth and very little finesse, but with the expanse of the Indian Ocean a stone's throw away from the warehouse, Eames can't in good conscience complain. 

His entire contribution boils down to a bit of good old-fashioned thieving, no forging, minimal research, so he spends more time watching Arthur than studying their mark. Arthur in repose, Arthur in motion, Arthur being Arthur with his usual single-minded precision, and in those small but self-contained moments everything is normal. 

It's when Arthur looks at him, with something further from affection than from apathy, that he finds he's been lulled into a false sense of security, and the constant see-sawing from one reality to the other keeps him uncharacteristically off-balance. So much so it takes him three days to catch on to the slow but steady deterioration of Arthur’s mood, from pleasant to sullen to borderline belligerent. And after two years of learning Arthur’s habits and his pressure points, Eames doesn’t need a doctor to diagnose the problem.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” he remarks the next time they’re bent over the interior model of the Trump Building’s 56th floor. Cobb is flipping through Arthur’s files, and Mal pretends not to hear.

“And what made you come to that conclusion?” 

The question is clipped but cordial, and he studies the bruising below Arthur’s eyes, the strain at the corners of Arthur’s mouth. He knows insomnia isn’t the illness; it’s the side effect. He senses the monsters that lurk in the recesses, biding their time until Arthur closes his eyes.

“You’re irritable, short-tempered, easily distracted. All in all, terrible company.” Arthur finally looks up and Eames can’t help himself, because even when Arthur’s pale and drawn and exasperated, he’s a work of art. “And frankly, darling, you look like death warmed over.”

“For fuck’s sake, Eames, quit acting like you _know_ me.”

Something clatters to the ground but Eames doesn’t turn, too preoccupied with being blindsided by what feels like the force of a semi-trailer. Arthur looks a little stricken, increasingly mortified by his lack of self-restraint, and Eames just tries to breathe, wondering how many more beatings his heart can take.

“I—shit,” Arthur drags one hand over his face and rests the other against the table, “I didn’t mean that.”

Eames gives a minute shake of his head, still a little incapacitated by Arthur’s words, by Arthur’s total disregard, however unconscious, for the people they used to be.

“I know when I’ve outstayed my welcome,” he says finally, smiling humourlessly before turning on his heels, deciding that he isn’t above petty grievances or self-pity.

The outside air is temperate, humid enough that he feels its weight as he makes his way to the sand, pulling off his shoes and socks as he goes. The undertow drags against the shore meters below the damp line marked by the high tide. He slips his feet into the water, looking out at the spectrum of blue throwing pools of unfathomable depth into sharp relief. And he just stands, keeping track of the tide rather than the time, until Cobb finds him.

“You’re right about Arthur.” Cobb’s also barefoot, trousers rolled to his calves as he stands beside Eames. “He’s starting to make mistakes. Even on a job like this we can’t afford mistakes.”

“There’s a chemist in Kongowea who owes me a favour or three. I’ll pay him a visit tomorrow.”

They lapse into silence and watch the ocean darken with the sky until it’s blanketed in a single, infinite hue.

“It’s been less than two weeks. He just needs more time.”

The conviction in Cobb’s voice only draws the fear closer, and he feels it cornering his heart.

“I’ve come to terms with the possibility that he might never remember. But what fucking terrifies me is,” and he can only bring himself to confess it here, at the land’s edge where there’s only smooth, open space beyond his fingertips, “this time he won’t fall in love with me. That it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen twice.”

The ocean washes in, cold and opaque, numbing his toes.

“Arthur's hardheaded and stubborn and a pain in the ass when he wants to be, but he’s far from stupid. And what the two of you have, it’s not something that goes away.” Cobb finally turns, eyes obscured by the dark but words crystal clear. “So you fight, Eames. You fight for him.”

Eames turns and starts walking the way they came, smiling a little.

“You know, Mal said something eerily similar.”

And Cobb just laughs, a gentle but unshakable sound that carries beautifully on the wind.

When they return to the hotel, Eames walks past his room to Arthur’s and knocks on the door before he can second guess himself.

When it opens, Arthur is out of his jacket and waistcoat, cuffs still tight around his wrists but tie loosened, shirt unbuttoned past the dip of his collarbone, and Eames shoves his hands into his pockets to make sure they don’t do anything stupid.

“I’m sorry. About earlier,” Arthur says before Eames can drag his eyes away from the hollow of Arthur’s throat.

The sincerity, colored unmistakably with regret, makes him look up.

“I didn’t come looking for an apology.” He takes a step forward without thinking, because Arthur’s eyes are dark and devastating, and he can’t remember the last time they touched each other purposefully. “We’re good for each other, you know, contrary to what you might think. Bloody perfect, actually. And I’m prepared to go to great lengths to make you see that.”

He turns and leaves before Arthur has a chance to reject him, even with his heart moving at odds with his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Nice girls don’t feel the way I do_ is one of Rita Hayworth's lines in the movie, _You Were Never Lovelier_ , in which she stars opposite Fred Astaire.
> 
> Apparently Tom Hardy stole cars during a period of youthful rebellion, so that's where I drew my inspiration for Eames. The little I know about cars, and about stealing them, I learned from _Gone In Sixty Seconds_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My updating pace is slower than I'd like and for that I apologize, but RL is a bitch right now. Thanks to everyone reading, following, and, especially, commenting. <3

“Have dinner with me tonight.”

They’re in between jobs, following the circuitous trail of a piece of art Arthur will apparently stop at nothing to get his hands on. Eames only barely put up a fight, mostly to feel like he had some say in the matter, because his other option was to travel alone and that had become increasingly less desirable than traveling with Arthur.

“Are you trying to court me, Mr. Eames?” Arthur looks at him over his sunglasses, mouth teasing with those dimples that somehow make him look both utterly guileless and utterly wicked.

“Would you like me to?”

The truth is, Eames has always been less about romantic gestures than about blatant seduction and a good, hard fuck. But, as he watches the morning light bathe the slope of Arthur’s cheek in an incandescent warmth, he thinks that, for Arthur, he could afford to be a little sentimental.

He changes into something less garish for dinner, more to Arthur’s tastes, and, when they hail a cab, opens the door for Arthur to slide inside.

“So you _are_ courting me.”

Arthur’s voice is low and musical, eyes dark as pitch, and with the shadows gliding across his face like ink over ivory, Eames can only hold his breath and smile.

Dinner goes swimmingly, and then it doesn’t. Then they learn that Addis Ababa isn’t so much a place for collecting art as it is for settling old scores.

“Darling,” Eames says ruefully as they make for the exit, pursued by two hired guns that look entirely too happy to see them, “you can’t say I didn’t try.”

*

Yusuf’s pharmacy sits on the border of luxury and poverty, a nondescript, shuttered storefront that states its purpose in both English and Swahili. When Eames walks in, he’s sat at the counter in his reading glasses, scrawling in a notepad, surrounded by shelves upon shelves of murky liquids in dusty old vials.

“I see your penmanship hasn’t improved.” In fact, it still looks about as appalling as Eames’s on a bad day.

Yusuf looks up, briefly startled, before he grins and slips off his glasses.

“It does the job. I didn’t know you were in town.”

“Business, not pleasure, unfortunately.”

“Arthur’s not with you?”

They’d teamed up for a job eight months ago, during which Arthur had got on splendidly with Yusuf, more easily than Eames would’ve expected given his usual philosophy of useless until proven competent.

“I’m here because of Arthur, actually. He’s—having trouble sleeping. ” Eames doesn’t elaborate, knowing there’s no such thing as too much discretion in this business, where people are loyal right up until they can turn a profit. He’d go so far as to consider Yusuf a friend, and even then he doesn’t trust him. 

Yusuf watches him for a moment, a little too shrewdly, before he stands.

“I have something that’ll work well.” He retrieves a relatively new vial from a shelf at eye-level and hands it to Eames. “Weaker than the compound I administer to my usual customers—seven hours of sleep translates to a little more than a day in the dream—but it has the added bonus of a calming agent. Subdues the subconscious.”

The vial is fragile, nearly weightless, but if his previous encounters with Yusuf’s concoctions are anything to go by, Eames doesn’t doubt it packs a punch. 

“Does that influence the projections?”

“No, not directly. It can alter the dreamscape, which might lead to some spillover. But if the dreamer’s subconscious is militarized, you’re just as likely to be shot in the face. So I’ve been told.” Yusuf looks a little chagrined before he clears his throat. “It’s not a Somnacin derivative so there’s a much lower risk of dependence, and withdrawal, but I’d limit its use to three weeks. Better safe than sorry.”

Eames drops the vial into his pocket and slides on his sunglasses as he heads to the door.

“We’ll be needing a chemist for our next job.”

Yusuf gives a wave. “Ta. Give Arthur my best.”

Eames returns to the warehouse fully prepared to be met with staunch resistance, because the thing about Arthur, the thing few people get to learn, is that what he values even more than competence is self-sufficiency. He’s cultivated a professional reputation for the former with little effort, but the latter is entirely personal. It’s a single notion he’s fixated on, the notion that he doesn’t need to be taken care of, that dependency, in any form, points to some irrevocably fatal flaw.

Sure enough, he looks equal parts wounded and resentful by the time Eames sets the vial down onto his desk, resigned for the time being to this wretched pattern they’ve fallen into of taking one step forward and two steps back.

“Goddamn it, Eames. I didn’t ask for your help and I don’t need you doing me any favors.”

There are few instances where Arthur finds it necessary to raise his voice, having a particular talent for leveling most men with just his eyes, but it’s clear he knows Eames isn’t most men, even when he’s back to knowing little else.

“Arthur, darling, don’t make it harder for yourself than it already is.” Eames bites his tongue but it’s too late. Arthur’s being infuriatingly obstinate and Eames can’t say he’s had a proper night’s sleep either, not since they shared a bed six days ago, which means his brain-to-mouth filter is less than reliable.

“I’ll make it whatever the fuck I want, you condescending _ass_.”

Arthur’s livid now, fury dense and thinly controlled, and while it won’t be impossible to make him relent, it’ll be bloody difficult. Eames pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a moment to acknowledge the irony of his predicament.

“I’m sorry, that was entirely uncalled for. At least think it over, all right? The fact of the matter is, you’re sorely in need of sleep and it’s starting to show in your work.”

Despite what his momentary slip-up would suggest, he knows how to be strategic where Arthur’s concerned. He knows that, currently, his best bet is to deflect attention away from anything exacerbating Arthur’s ambivalence, namely himself, and onto the one thing Arthur can’t in good conscience ignore.

When Arthur presses his lips together and says nothing, he takes it as a positive sign and walks away, because he also knows not to push his luck.

It’s not until the next day, when he and Cobb are returning from a useless meeting with their equally useless employer, that he finds Arthur hooked up to a spare PASIV, stretched out on his favorite chair. 

He stands staring for a moment before reaching for a second line, compelled by the creeping fear that Yusuf really has no idea what he’s doing, or maybe just by the sight of Arthur made softer and more vulnerable by sleep.

“Eames.” He hears Mal cautioning him as he lies down and bares his wrist, jamming the cannula in without waiting for her to talk him out of what’s bound to be a terrible idea.

It’s Paris, cloaked in twilight. 

He stands in front of the Louvre, its pyramid to his left, the Cour Napoléon quiet and bare. _Unimaginative_ would spring to mind, but he knows better. He knows Arthur’s perfectly capable of thinking outside the box; he’s just a creature of habit and, more often than not, that makes him predictable. He seeks out familiarity and nurtures a certain fondness for routine. And it’s precisely what Eames used to go out of his way to avoid, falling into the kinds of patterns that brought him back to the same places, the same people.

He spots Arthur at the entrance and settles on an unassuming face, nonthreatening and pleasant to look at, pretty but not contrived, belonging to a Dutch thief he once knew who painted sublime forgeries of Vermeer and counted cards in his spare time.

“Lovely evening.” From what he remembers of Johannes’ vowels, he thinks his accent needs a little work. 

Arthur turns, a little surprised at being approached, and then relaxes, taking a moment to appraise the purposely unkempt hair, dark stubble, wide generous mouth. Johannes always looked more Italian than Dutch, and it so happens that Arthur’s tastes tend to run towards tall, dark, and handsome.

“Care to join me?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Eames makes sure to trail half a pace behind even though he knows where Arthur will go first; it’s always where Arthur goes first. The staccato of their footfalls is distinct, unnaturally loud, and in the Sully Wing’s airy expanse, unpolluted by the masses, he smells the warm spice of Arthur’s cologne.

“You know she was carved from two separate blocks? One for the torso, one for the legs.”

In moments like this, Eames finds he never tires of the understated artistry with which Arthur fills in his dreams. Mostly with broad, efficient strokes, until he reaches something that strikes a chord in him, and then it’s all achingly exquisite detail. 

“Parian marble, isn’t it?”

Arthur raises his eyebrows approvingly. “A fan of Greek antiquities?” 

Honestly Eames finds most sculptures lifeless and dull, but Arthur’s enthusiasm for the medium has inevitably been rubbing off on him.

“I dabbled in sculpture at art school. Never did work my way up to life-sized.”

It’s not a complete lie; Johannes had been enrolled at the _Accademia_ in Bologna for an entire term before he got bored and traded in his EU passport for an American one.

Arthur returns his attention to the statue, studying it, like he always does, as if he’s never seen it before.

“A seamless marriage of aesthetics, dating back as early as the 5th century B.C., and as late as the 1st. A single sculpture embodying five hundred years of artistic evolution. Pretty extraordinary, isn’t it?”

He glances at Eames, mouth upturned, and Eames thinks this isn’t at all going according to plan. The plan was to make sure the dream was stable and that Arthur didn’t have an unexpectedly poor reaction to the new compound, all the while keeping his distance. Then again, they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And with Arthur looking like this, color returning to his cheeks, eyes alert, _alive_ , Eames hardly has the time to feel repentant before he bridges the distance between them with two long strides and kisses Arthur, right hand coming up to cup the back of his neck.

Arthur stiffens for just a second before relaxing again, allowing his body to curve a little towards Eames, mouth yielding and opening, and the heat, the unadulterated taste of him shatters Eames, so decisively he thinks they won’t even know where to begin putting him back together. The sensations of Arthur against him make him feel at once impossibly full and incurably empty, condensing the staggering extent of what he loves and what he’s lost into a single moment isolated from both reality and the dream.

He doesn’t even realize he’s slipped from Johannes to Eames until Arthur pulls back, sharply, mouth wet and a little swollen, pupils blown with equal measures of lust and rage.

“You bastard,” he seethes, and then runs away before Eames can hold onto him.

The room doesn’t visually change but there’s a sudden shift in the air, as if something, somewhere was just disrupted.

“ _Shit_.” 

He walks quickly through the adjoining rooms and sees that instead of the corridor leading out of Greek Antiquities, there are more rooms, with exits that lead him God knows where. It’s when he realizes he’s staring at _The Coronation of Napoleon_ that he works out what Arthur’s done. Flattened the floors so that every room in the Louvre is stitched together like a patchwork quilt with no pattern to speak of, evidently with the sole purpose of getting Eames utterly fucking lost.

He takes a seat and stares at his shoes, coming to the depressing conclusion that it makes little difference whether he dreams up a gun and shoots himself now, or wanders aimlessly for the duration of the dream. So he sits a while before standing up, paying no attention to the art as he walks and thinks about how he’ll deal with the consequences when he wakes.

*

They’ve dealt with sub-security before, more times than he cares to keep track of. Usually they have a plan. Usually Arthur collects impeccable intel, Mal builds impossible mazes, and Cobb is a magician, but this time the projections are inexplicably smarter, quicker, nastier. And they’re packing C-4, which none of them sees coming until the hotel lobby explodes.

It’s Arthur who’s closest to the blast, playing the bait while Cobb and Eames work on the mark. By the time Eames gets to him he’s been thrown against the wall and reduced to a fucking mess, blood and debris everywhere, and, for better or worse, he’s breathing.

“Arthur, love, can you hear me?” Eames’s voice is steadier than his hands that come up to hold Arthur’s face. It’s the kind of sight he’ll never get used to, Arthur dying, torn to pieces, bleeding out, and it makes him occupy that odd space in his head where the distinction between sleeping and waking is essential and at the same time utterly worthless.

Arthur groans, frowning as he opens his eyes with some effort.

“Jesus fuck.” His voice is thick and strained, jaw working ineffectually against the pain.

“Cobb and I can still get it done if we work fast. I’m going to send you back to Mal, darling.” Eames uses his cuff to keep the blood out of Arthur’s eyes, wiping gently because he’s not entirely sure where it’s coming from.

Arthur nods, already slipping out of consciousness again, and Eames reluctantly withdraws his hands so he can pull out his gun.

“You know, seeing you like this is almost enough to force me into early retirement.” 

It’s only partly in jest and Arthur can tell because he keeps his eyes open for a moment longer.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

Eames smiles and says, “almost,” before he shoots.

*

He expects the fallout to be painful, but he’s nearly forgotten how agonizing it is when Arthur gives him the silent treatment, because, as with anything Arthur does, he’s ruthless in seeing it through. 

“Eames, my dear, you did do a terrible thing.”

He knew there was no hiding it from Mal, who’s nothing if not persistent, especially when she can sense she’s about to be vindicated.

“He trapped me in the bloody Louvre. You don’t think that counts as an eye for an eye?”

A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth, which is when he turns to glance at Arthur, currently balanced precariously, though precisely is more accurate, on the back legs of his chair, pen in his mouth. And Eames lets his head fall into his hands, concluding that whatever the score they’re keeping, it’s in fact unjustly skewed in Arthur’s favor.

“I think you should stop pouting and do something about it. Good things never come to those who wait.”

Eames laughs, loudly and unexpectedly, partly because he’s going a bit mad, and partly because Mal’s mangled English idioms never fail to charm him. It’s when he looks up that he finds Arthur staring back, just for a moment, eyes narrowing with something he’d call curiosity if it didn’t feel entirely incongruous with how the day’s gone so far.

“I do not pout,” which is his way of telling Mal he agrees with her.

He corners Arthur at his desk, imposing himself into Arthur’s space so he has no choice but to look up, if only to tell Eames to fuck off.

Except he says, “Eames, can you please move, you’re blocking my light.” 

Eames can accept the irritation, the anger, even the mistrust, but he refuses to accept this apathy, this _politeness_ that tries to suggest Arthur’s only tolerating him for the sake of the job, or because Mal asked him to play nice, and Eames isn’t sure which sounds worse.

“Let’s step outside and talk like rational adults, shall we?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before proceeding to drag Arthur out of the warehouse by his elbow, having learned from the few times they’ve sparred that whatever advantage Arthur holds over him in speed, he makes up for in strength.

But Arthur doesn’t put up a fight, and they walk until their shoes start sinking into sand. The sky is overcast, wind a little biting as low clouds roll in from the East, carrying the third tropical storm of the season.

When they stop, Arthur crosses his arms over his chest, looking wary but decidedly more rested, less tightly wound, and Eames slips a hand into his pocket to drag his thumb along his poker chip, even when the distinction between this Arthur and dream-Arthur is still an easy one.

“If I promise to not have designs on your virtue, will you lighten up a little?”

He swears he sees amusement break loose in Arthur’s eyes before he reins it in.

“Are you surprised that I don’t trust you right now?”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” which, in hindsight, he acknowledges is a daft thing to say under the circumstances.

Arthur’s restraint buckles under the sudden pressure of his anger.

“You’re fucking joking, right? _Christ_ , Eames, you don’t get to traipse into my dreams uninvited and pretend to be someone else to get me to talk to you. I’m not a fucking mark, for fuck’s sake.”

Eames can’t deny Arthur’s right, or that the truth doesn’t hurt like hell. Because the truth is, he still forgets they’re back to where they started, with little groundwork laid and Arthur trusting him about as far as he can throw him. He guards his secrets more tightly than possibly anyone Eames has ever met, which naturally makes his dreams that much more private and intimate, more easily violated. Consequently, it makes Eames a thoughtless bastard at best, and, at worst, a heartless one.

“I’m sorry.” The clouds open then, ruthlessly, rain lashing their cheeks and sluicing down their necks. “You’re right, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can say to excuse my behavior.”

The apology is stiffly formal, clumsy in his mouth, and Arthur lets his shoulders slump a little, as though aware that, for the first time since he woke in hospital, Eames is holding back, withdrawing any incriminating traces of outwardly affection like it’s a secret he’d bury if Arthur only asked.

A minute passes, or maybe an hour, before Arthur says, “you’re not at all the man I thought you were,” and in the downpour, it sounds something like a concession.


	4. Chapter 4

They catch a red-eye out of Oslo, covering their tracks through Minsk before they settle on Donetsk, whereupon Eames heads straight to the hotel bar, tetchy, overwrought, and jetlagged, thanks to their piss poor excuse for an extractor who, as it turns out, wouldn’t have known good sense if it kicked him in the balls. They hadn’t vetted him because he’d come recommended, by one of Eames’s own, and he knocks back his whiskey to wash out the lingering bitterness in his mouth, then orders another because Arthur’s nowhere to be found. 

He doesn’t see the blonde a few seats away until she moves closer, uncurling her left leg to accentuate the dangerous slit of her dress and smiling with a little teeth, lips slick and red. His Ukrainian is appalling, his Russian only marginally better, but he’s not an idiot. And when she places a hand on his thigh, nails sharp the way he likes it, he thinks it’s been at least three days since he last fucked Arthur, in the extravagantly large shower of their Oslo suite with Arthur’s legs around his waist, throat bared under the spray.

So when she leans closer and slides her hand higher, breaths warm against his ear, he does nothing to discourage her, letting the lust spread comfortingly through his limbs.

Then he hears, “You sure don’t waste any time, do you.”

Arthur’s standing in front of them, eyes inscrutable, mouth vaguely amused, as if he’s a brilliant liar when, in fact, Eames knows he’s a terrible one.

“Darling, it’s nothing,” which is the truth; it was a moment of weakness men like Eames give into because they don’t know any better.

But Arthur doesn’t listen. Arthur turns to the woman and says, in impeccable Ukrainian, “That’s a beautiful dress,” before he walks away.

*

After the job, they return to Paris, catching the same cab from de Gaulle. Arthur doesn’t say a word while Eames frets, hands restless against his thighs until they’re back at the flat and Arthur’s things are tucked away neatly in the guest bedroom. It’s not an ideal living arrangement but he knows he’s in no position to argue seeing that Arthur could very well choose to put a continent between them and Eames wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing to stop him. 

So for the next three days he’s on his best behavior, keeping a safe distance between them and his hands unambiguously to himself, even when Arthur tries, albeit unwittingly, to foil him at every turn. Making obscene little noises over the first few sips of his morning coffee, padding through the rooms with bare feet that he tucks under him when he sits on the couch, wearing the Rolling Stones instead of Ascot Chang, as if Eames still has the privilege of seeing him stripped down to a bare minimum, less than proper but still wholly unapologetic, because somewhere between his floundering youth and now, he’d learned to not answer to anyone but himself.

And if Arthur appreciates Eames’s concerted, painstakingly virtuous efforts, he doesn’t show it, although he’s pleasant enough and amenable to Eames’s company, sometimes leaving the flat for long stretches but always returning, neither evasive nor forthcoming about his comings and goings.

This time when he reappears Mal walks in right behind him, and Eames can’t say he’s surprised, or opposed to having a semi-responsible adult between them in case he decides that today’s the day to do something utterly ill-advised. 

“Philippa has been asking after you, Arthur. James you barely remember.” Mal kicks off her heels, curls in artful disarray, eyes scintillating and making Eames afraid, very afraid, of the scheme she’s cooked up this time. “You love my dinner parties. And it’ll be good for you. Life is for living, _mon cher_ , not hiding away.”

Arthur met Mal long before he met Eames, when she noticed him on the lawns of her school sketching vanishing points, horizon lines, and isometric projections before he knew what to call them. At 24, what he knew was war, aerial bombardments, blood flowing over foreign soil, religious fanatics sacrificing their young to the jihad. He knew all about death but little about life, and that’s what Mal taught him. She took him through the streets of Paris and showed him how to breathe again, to let her beautiful city heal him.

“Mal, it’s already complicated,” Arthur leans his hip against the couch and crosses his arms, making a point to not look at Eames. “And you know I hate making small talk. I _put up_ with your dinner parties because the one time I didn’t, you made sure I was racked with guilt and willing to do anything to make it up to you.”

“Our neighbors are wonderful people, Arthur. In fact, you _like_ them.”

“Great, so I’d also have to pretend to like them.”

“I’m making _cassoulet_.” 

Arthur immediately goes still. “Now that’s not playing fair.”

“Eames, when have you ever known me to play fair?”

“Never, which is why we get on so beautifully,” he says, at the risk of incurring Arthur’s wrath, because he rarely, if ever, passes up an opportunity to tease Arthur, and opportunities are what he’s been sorely lacking lately. 

Arthur throws him a look of betrayal. “If you sweeten the deal with apple tart, I’ll seriously consider.”

“My apple tart is fucking transcendent, Arthur, don’t insult me.”

“ _Fine_ , I’ll go to your goddamn dinner party.”

It never fails to delight Eames how shamelessly easy Arthur becomes when food enters the equation. With the exception of his ludicrously expensive taste in bespoke suits, his habits emphasize necessity rather than indulgence. But place him in front of a gleaming enameled cast-iron French oven or a delicately whipped _mousse au chocolat_ and his restraint crumbles like the buttery dough of his beloved apple tart.

“For the record, I _adore_ your dinner parties.” Eames beams at Mal while Arthur tries to incinerate him with his eyes. “Bringing wine and flowers, eating too many hors d’oeuvres, gossiping about the latest political scandal. Almost makes normalcy sound compelling, doesn’t it?” 

He smiles at Arthur, slowly and diligently, and for a moment Arthur looks at him as if there’s something he can’t name but recognizes, and if he blinks he’ll never figure out what it is.

“I consider myself perfectly normal,” Mal says, slightly offended.

“Do you mean apart from the criminal activity, the occasional death threats, and the obscenely large Swiss bank account?”

“It’s all relative.” She waves a hand at him dismissively as she checks her watch. “I should probably get back before the children give Dom a heart attack.”

“Still having trouble convincing him of the virtues of French parenting?”

“What would _you_ know about French parenting?” Arthur’s question is expertly laden with pointed skepticism.

“I make a point of knowing something about everything, darling,” Eames says, a little smugly, to which Arthur responds by rolling his eyes. “And you never know when a job might go awry and our survival will hinge on my ability to give a convincing turn as a French nanny.”

“You would make a lovely French nanny,” Mal proclaims as they walk her to the door, then turns to Arthur. “He’s a natural with children. Philippa is a little smitten I think.”

“She’ll inevitably find a younger man and break my heart.”

Arthur just stares at him openly, too taken aback to conceal his curiosity and the bewildered amusement that draws out his right dimple, and it’s one of the many devastating shades of him that truly make Eames fear for the state of his heart.

“I’ll see you two Saturday evening, then. On your best behavior.”

The delicate floral notes of Mal’s perfume linger in the air after the door closes.

Arthur looks aptly resigned. “So what’s our story?”

“You’re an architect, educated at MIT, fluent in eight languages. You were tragically orphaned at the tender age of five and very nearly an Olympic diver but there was a nasty pool accident from which you’ve never emotionally recovered. I was an actor with moderate acclaim on the stage but I just couldn’t hack it on screen, burned through three marriages in five years, a complete cad until you reformed me. Now I’m making documentaries about starving children in third-world countries.”

“That’s it? I’m oddly disappointed.”

“Oh, Arthur, what you must think of me. I’m just getting started.” 

And that draws a smile out of him, small but unreserved, and comfortingly close to normal.

*

They’ve been dancing around each other for weeks since Mombasa, months since Liverpool if they want to be honest about it, with Arthur refusing to be the first one to cave and Eames waiting for an opportune moment involving a real bed, possibly two of Arthur’s favorite ties around his wrists, and definitely multiple orgasms. He had it all planned out in theory. In practice, it goes something like this:

“Eames, fuck, we’re in a fucking elevator 160 floors above ground.” Fortunately, it doesn’t stop Arthur from riding Eames’s thigh a little harder, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, but still not debauched enough for Eames’s tastes. For one, his tie is still aggravatingly straight.

“162. It’ll take security a good while to reach us.” 

“That’s not the—” Which is when Eames decides to shut him up, tongue pushing forward into sweet, slick heat, tasting him with relentless strokes, teeth dragging through his lower lip and eliciting a deliciously broken sound, like he’s already wrecked. Next time Eames will make sure to slow it down and take Arthur apart piece by piece, hear him _beg_ for it in that smooth voice of his that makes Eames think of silk ties and expensive Scotch.

But now he doesn’t have the time or the patience with Arthur’s cool hands undoing his trousers with a single-minded purpose, and he jerks his hips, shoving Arthur higher up the wall until the tips of his shoes are barely touching the floor. 

He comes with Arthur keening against him, swallowing his name, and his mouth on the curve of Arthur’s neck, spilling into those pale, lovely fingers.

*

If the Cobbs’ home, nestled in the heart of the 5th arrondissement, is suited to anything, it’s a dinner party. 

They happened upon the place three years ago by word of mouth, a writer looking to sell and retire to the Amalfi Coast. The way Mal tells it, they’d stepped inside and never looked back, and it isn’t terribly hard to believe. Every inch of the bright, airy interior feels like a dream. Floor-to-ceiling paneling, vintage carved moldings, dark-stained pilasters, all of it attesting marvelously to both Mal’s elegant tastes and Cobb’s architectural ones.

Conveniently, the space is also designed so that heavenly smells from the kitchen waft out perfectly into the foyer. 

“Oh my god, I smell duck fat.” Arthur moans a little as they follow Cobb through the flat and Eames thinks he’ll probably not survive if he has to put up with those sounds all night and simultaneously be on his best behavior. “And pork and thyme. I feel light-headed.”

Desperate to distract from Arthur’s cassoulet-induced throes of ecstasy, he asks, “Are the children asleep already?”

Small, quick footfalls sound in answer.

“Uncle Eames! Uncle Arthur!” Philippa bursts into the room, blonde hair flying wildly, face alight with excitement, clutching a piece of paper in one hand.

Eames scoops her up easily into his arms, twirling her as she squeals in delight.

“You’re still light as a feather, my princess, and positively dazzling in pink.” He sets her down and she beams at him like a little ray of sunshine.

“I have a present for you and Uncle Arthur.” She hands him the paper, suddenly a little shy as she glances at Arthur from beneath her lashes, limbs fidgety.

“Did you draw this all by yourself?” Arthur’s kneeling beside him now, smelling warm and utterly divine.

Philippa nods, hands clasped behind her back. It’s a drawing of two stick figures, floating in midair with fluffy blue clouds above them and a huge lopsided heart between them shaded unevenly in red. One stick figure seems to be wearing a tie.

“It’s a work of art, my dear. Deserves a frame, doesn’t it?” Eames looks at Arthur, who smiles, the planes of his face, his eyes, soft with the diffuse glow of the room’s ambient lighting. “Don’t forget to sign your name in the corner, love. All good artists do. That way, no one else will be able to say they drew it, yea?”

Philippa’s eyes widen. “I forgot! My crayons are in my room,” she informs them before dashing off.

“Unless she finds herself in the sights of an opportunistic forger.” Arthur’s lowering his voice, flashing his dimples, and Eames just blinks for a moment because Arthur’s _flirting_ , in that unconsciously sexy way of his that makes Eames imagine doing something utterly depraved, like shove Arthur against the nearest wall and suck him off until he’s coming down Eames’s throat, screaming.

“If I come across any, I’ll inform you straight away. Can’t be too careful with wicked men like them.”

It must be obvious what Eames is fantasizing because Arthur’s next breath sounds a little sharper and he draws back an inch, as if that makes the distance between them any safer.

“I’m back!” Philippa announces as she reappears, and then pouts unhappily. “But _maman_ says I have to go to bed soon.”

“ _Maman_ knows best, _mon petit chou_. But we’ll come tuck you in, how does that sound?” What most people never have the pleasure of learning about Arthur is that he has a particular knack for negotiating with four-year-olds.

By the time he carries her into the bedroom and Eames pulls the duvet up under her chin, brushing back her hair from her forehead, her eyes are already heavy with sleep. 

“Will you sing me a song, Uncle Arthur? _S’te plait_?”

The request, soft and sweet, would turn a lion into a lamb, and Arthur relents easily, sitting down on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his jacket. 

Then he starts to hum, low but sure, the unmistakable refrain of _La Vie En Rose_ , notes rising and dipping beautifully, and Eames can’t look away or breathe because it feels like a lifetime since they danced on the cliffs of Étretat, to this song playing on the speakers of their rented convertible. 

Philippa falls asleep within minutes, and as Arthur closes the door gently behind them, Eames says, because he never gets tired of saying, “You’ll be the end of me, you know. It’s the one, terrifying, certainty in life I choose to accept.” 

Arthur freezes, closing his eyes briefly, one palm still against the door as if that’s what’s anchoring him, impossibly, to reality.

“Eames,” is all he says and, even though he makes it sound like they’d both be better off if Eames stopped being so alarmingly candid, so fucking sentimental, he doesn’t run away. He just stays, and breathes, and Eames remembers how long it took Arthur the last time to understand what Eames had never found it necessary to articulate. He plays his parts for the jobs and he plays them without reservation. He certainly hasn’t gotten to where he is by holding back or having moral crises over exploiting a stranger’s trust and weaknesses; he’s a fucking criminal for God’s sake. What Arthur dissects on paper, Eames picks apart in the flesh, and while he doesn’t deny that requires a certain unrepentant imagination, he’s hardly the sociopath his reputation has made him out to be. With Arthur, he’s never played a part. With Arthur, he’s always been at his most flawed, and most sincere.

“Eames! Arthur! _So_ lovely to see you again, it’s been too long.”

Eames turns to see the next-door neighbors at the end of the corridor, waving eagerly, holding glasses of the Lillet that Mal insists is the only true aperitif. Cobb knows better than to argue and hides a bottle of Campari behind his architecture texts, which Eames suspects Mal knows about because if anyone’s good at digging up secrets, it’s her.

Arthur rubs his forehead with two fingers and sighs. “Adèle and Dave?”

“Adèle and Dave,” Eames confirms, a bit regrettably.

“Maybe it’s not too late to plot an escape. We’re not a hundred percent committed yet.”

“Mal would murder us with her bare hands.”

Arthur pauses. “And she wouldn’t be quick about it.”

“She would not, no.”

“Fuck.” Arthur tugs at his waistcoat before buttoning his jacket and smoothing down his tie, something of a reflex that always makes Eames imagine he’s preparing for battle determined to emerge victorious from the violence without a spot of blood on him. 

“ _Far_ too long.” Luckily, Eames takes a perverse sort of satisfaction in small talk. “How is little Luc? He’s ten months now, isn’t he?”

“What a superb memory you have, Eames.” Adèle smiles appreciatively then turns to her husband, none too subtly, as if she’s trying to convince him of Eames’s virtues. “He crawls _everywhere_ and puts _everything_ in his mouth. It became so exhausting that we found an au pair, a lovely enthusiastic girl from Ukraine. _Arthur_ , didn’t you say you spoke Ukrainian?”

“I, uh, I do, yes. I’m embarrassingly out of practice, though. My job doesn’t take me to Ukraine much.” Arthur smiles effortlessly, because for all his griping about small talk, he’s scarily good at it when he needs to be, which more or less is Arthur in a nutshell.

When they walk into the dining room the table is already set, elegantly minimal with a charming herb bouquet in the center.

“Is Philippa asleep?” Mal appears with two plates of bread and pâté. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see James, Arthur, he was fussier than usual today and didn’t take his afternoon nap.”

“I’ll come by again in a few days. Philippa’s grown so fast,” Arthur says quietly, with distinct effort, as if the sight of her has so far been the most heartbreaking reminder of the two years he can’t relive or retrieve.

“Children do that.” Mal smiles reassuringly, telling him there’s still time, and Eames busies himself with taking the plates from her hands, making sure his don’t shake as he sets one on either side of the centerpiece. “Adèle, Dave, I’ve been an atrocious host, how is Luc?”

When Eames looks up, Arthur’s staring at him with a small crease between his eyebrows, pursing his lips before walking over and reaching up to adjust Eames’s collar, and it feels so familiar, so utterly _easy_ that Eames nearly lets himself curve his hands around Arthur’s hips, the way he's used to.

Then he hears Adèle. 

“Eames, Arthur, you must remind me how the two of you met. You make such a beautiful couple.”

Arthur’s fingers still but stay where they are, eyes waiting for him to give them a good story, and he suddenly can’t quite remember what they rehearsed.

“It was in Liverpool, the first Monday in October. It’d been dreary and damp all day, even more wretched out on the docks but that’s where we met. I could tell he thought I was up to no good, like maybe I’d trick him into telling me all his secrets. But I’d already decided that I’d live to regret it if I didn’t get him to smile, just once.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments! They've been incredibly flattering and incredibly encouraging. <3

“I hate laundry day.” 

Arthur growls this as he stalks about the bedroom, throwing clothes at the laundry basket with appalling aim, while Eames observes from a safe vantage point, leaned against the door frame. He’s quickly learned that while Arthur finds routine soothing, _domestic_ routine is another matter entirely. In fact, it’s one of the few things, quite possibly the only thing in the entire world apart from Eames’s devastating charisma, that trips Arthur up and gets him flustered in a way that’s deliciously out of character. 

“Separating the whites from the colors, picking the right temperature, the right spin speed, the right load size, Jesus, infiltrating _North Korea_ would be easier. And why is the _express_ cycle ninety goddamn minutes? Aren’t we rich enough to just burn our dirty clothes and replace them? Or at least _outsource_.”

Yes, Eames is fairly certain that a job, even one failing so spectacularly as to involve base jumping off a collapsing glacier, has never reduced Arthur to a raving lunatic. Although, he admits, he makes minimal effort to discourage the melodrama and, really, at this point, Arthur’s only complaining for the sake of complaining.

“But, darling, we own a perfectly functional washing machine. Besides, there’s something criminally sexy about the sight of you folding my shirts.”

It’s the first time he’s confessed to this particular weakness, and it makes Arthur pause to look at him, thoughtfully, no doubt filing away the information for later exploitation, which he can’t say he objects to in the slightest.

“If you’re trying to get out of laundry duty next week, you’ll have to try harder than that.”

Arthur’s smiling now, looking deceptively, beautifully ordinary with his unruly hair and bare feet, and Eames finds he can no longer keep his hands to himself.

“I’ll have you know that with you I always try _exceedingly_ hard.”

*

Mal’s dinner party turns out to be incredibly effective at getting Arthur to loosen up. In particular, getting him to loosen up around Eames. It’s not measurable progress but it’s tangible, in the way he allows Eames into his spaces, the way he smiles without pausing first to consider the consequences. Eames would find it easy to slide into a state of blissful denial if it weren’t for the moments when Arthur suddenly frowns, entirely unprovoked, and they relapse into lukewarm silence, which, in Eames’s opinion, could only be made worse by pleasantries about the bloody weather. So, actually, he imagines they’re not so much moving forward as they are taking the most circuitous route possible from point A to point B. But it’s hardly surprising; there’s never been a path of least resistance where Arthur’s concerned, and Eames wouldn’t really have it any other way. He used to think life was all about enjoying the things that came easy, before Arthur came long and turned that notion on its head. Before he started chasing, with a wholly uncharacteristic vengeance, the one thing he knew for certain wouldn’t come easy.

This morning, however, has gone swimmingly so far. On a scale of one to ten, he thinks, given the way Arthur’s stretched out on the couch heedless of how close his feet are to being in Eames’s lap, they’re hovering steadily at a seven. 

“How would you feel about a little trip across the pond?”

Arthur stills visibly but doesn’t look up from the morning’s paper. “I’ll need something a little more specific than that.”

Eames suspected he’d say that. “Arthur, Arthur, where’s your sense of _adventure_.”

“Define adventure.”

And that, too. “Getting your suit wrinkled, wearing garishly colored socks, reading the sections of the newspaper out of order.”

Eames realizes he’s getting a little distracted from his original purpose, but sometimes these opportunities to tease Arthur get handed to him on a silver platter and it would be unthinkable to let them go to waste.

“So far you’re failing to make me see the merits of this trip you’ve proposed.”

Arthur wets his finger with a neat, little lick before turning the page and Eames swallows to keep from making any incriminating sounds.

“An extractor I know has a job lined up in New York. A Fortune 500 company looking to improve their HFT algorithms by stealing from the competition. Prep work’s scheduled to start in two days but her architect’s off the grid and her point man contracted what seems to be acute hepatitis on his last job in Luanda.”

Arthur finally looks up, interest piqued, and Eames would be a tad offended if his intention wasn’t to lure Arthur in with a job offer.

“Dirty needle?”

“Prostitute is more likely.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows without comment, no doubt perfectly aware that his looks are always worth a thousand cutting words.

“That’s besides the point.”

“Ah, so there’s a point.” Arthur’s mouth twitches, eyes unabashedly devious, and Eames is swooning a little, and trying his bloody hardest not to show it lest it undermine his already precarious advantage.

“I enjoy prolonging your suspense. So, New York, what do you say? We can do the whole tourist bit again. Eat gigantic pretzels, pay a small fortune for a ten-minute ride on a horse-drawn carriage.”

“Again?” Arthur blinks, because of course it’s the only word he pays attention to.

“We were there five months ago, just a stopover, really.” Which is technically true; he just leaves out the part about it being on their way to Denver to see Arthur’s family at their insistence, after Arthur uncharacteristically let slip that he wasn’t just sharing a flat with Eames, he was _living with_ Eames.

And Eames waits for Arthur to frown and retreat into his headspace the way he’s been inclined to do when he’s confronted with that word, _we_ , the single incongruity of the past two years he can’t bring himself to reconcile with the life he’s lead. 

But he just stares at Eames for a suspended moment before saying, “New York. Okay then,” and Eames can’t help being a little reckless.

“How about I fill you in on the details over dinner?”

“Dinner,” Arthur repeats, as if it’s an utterly foreign concept, but not entirely unappealing.

“I’ve had a hankering for Ethiopian.” Eames smiles, thinking they never did make up for the last time.

*

“When were you going to tell me?” Eames drops the paper sleeve on the table and watches Arthur turn away from his laptop, confused until he realizes what he’s looking at.

“How did you find that?” The question’s both accusing and threatening, and Eames decides then that being a rational adult is fucking overrated.

“If you didn’t want it to be found, then you did a pitiful job of hiding it. I expected more from you, darling.”

Arthur’s eyes gleam. “And I didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to rifle through my things, so I guess we’re both disappointments.”

“ _When were you planning on telling me._ ” 

His palm comes down hard against the tabletop and Arthur flinches at the impact. He’s learned that with Arthur he finds the worst versions of himself, flaws that make him recoil even as he indulges them.

“I don’t have to tell you a goddamn thing if I don’t want to.”

“A plane ticket to Detroit, Arthur. A single fucking ticket.” 

The name on it isn’t one he’s seen Arthur use before. Ordinary, American, looking as if it encompasses a life that denies the entire existence of the one they’re standing in now. He knows Arthur has his secrets, and while he has the means, legitimate and otherwise, to find them out, he’s chosen to be patient, certain it’ll be worth the wait. Now, staring at Arthur’s intended, seemingly permanent destination, he imagines Arthur’s plan all along was to make him wait forever.

“Eames.” Arthur runs a hand through his hair, anger deflating, as though he’s readying an explanation, but it doesn’t come. 

*

It’s a cozy establishment by Paris III with warm, intimate lighting, colorful tasseled cushions, and ceremonial masks adorning exposed brick. A romantic, exotic getaway requiring minimal travel, though Eames doesn’t sell it in those words and Arthur doesn’t comment. Despite the shade of truth in Eames’s teasing, Arthur’s delightfully adventurous when it comes to food, fearless, in fact, having consumed things that made Eames question his self-preservation instinct, which, given their line of work, was saying something.

They’re seated at a private table in the back corner with a single candle that throws Arthur’s face into sharp relief against the shadows. He’s dressed down considerably by his standards, in a blue shirt and cotton trousers, but still exquisitely put together, undeniably _Arthur_ , and Eames imagines it’ll always leave him a little breathless.

“So who’s this extractor you know?” Arthur asks after they order their food, fingers toying with the hem of his napkin. His hands are almost always in motion, even when the rest of him is perfectly still.

“Georgiana. Georgie. She shares your fondness for withholding surnames. Unapologetically Scottish, flaming red hair, wickedly sharp. Not the sort of woman you’d forget.”

Arthur glances down, hesitating for just a moment before asking, “What was she to you?”, as if he can still read Eames like an open book.

It makes Eames move his hand towards his pocket until he thinks better of it, deciding he’s perfectly content not knowing for certain.

He leans forward, forearms against the table, and takes his time answering. That he’s told Arthur this bit of history before doesn’t make the second time round any easier or less complicated. He’s always found that honesty demands far greater attention than deception. If nine years in his trade teaches a man anything, it’s that telling a lie, for all the artistry people tend to think it requires, is more intrinsically human than telling the truth. It’s with Arthur that he tries his hardest to suppress that instinct, to be careful about substituting truth with one of its many pale imitations.

“For a time I thought I was in love with her.” Arthur’s drawn back from the candlelight, eyes now obscured in shadow. “Two years after I left London convinced I was better off in self-imposed exile, I hit rock bottom. Drinking, petty crime, but mainly drugs. There was nothing I wasn’t willing to shoot up so I could pretend to be on top of the world for a while. Needless to say I would’ve ended up dead, if not on the street then in prison, if Georgie hadn’t decided I could still be saved. God knows why, it’s still a bloody mystery to me. I just remember she was terrifyingly beautiful when she knew what she wanted. She built me my first dream, and the first you never forget.”

Arthur blinks slowly, as if waking from a one of his own he didn’t expect, with boundaries too far-flung for him to fathom.

“You said you thought you were in love with her.”

Eames resists the urge to smile, thinking that for someone who’s tight-lipped about his toothpaste preference, Arthur can sometimes be terribly transparent.

“We made each other happy for a while. We didn’t really belong anywhere so I suppose we thought we could belong to each other. The truth was I felt I owed it to her to stay and she liked having someone to take care of. But we had no regrets. At the very least I did my part to cure her of her appalling taste in men.”

Arthur tilts his head, dimples appearing ever so quietly.

“And what life lesson did she manage to teach you?”

“That I had no idea what happiness meant. And films like _Pretty Woman_ do not accurately portray real life. Woefully false advertising, in fact.”

Arthur’s smile spreads. “Only because you’re not as fabulous as Julia Roberts.”

If the waitress didn’t appear with their food at that precise moment, Eames would’ve been compelled to do something embarrassingly sentimental in the wake of Arthur’s teasing.

“God, this is good,” Arthur says after his first taste of the lamb stew, thumb wiping at the corner of his mouth, and Eames focuses intently on tearing off another piece of his _injera_. 

“The mark is a computer programmer, Russian immigrant, wife and two children. His employer pays him a handsome sum to keep him from handing off his algorithms to the highest bidder. Evidently it’s worked so far, so we’ll be a little more creative. Depending on how deeply his paranoia runs, the dream may have to be two levels.”

“He’s Russian. His subconscious is probably a fucking fortress.”

“Fair point. Georgie says she has a reliable chemist on call. I’d bring on Yusuf but apparently he’s unreachable in a village in Tanzania, being charitable or something.”

It’s not the charity that’s the problem. It’s that after years of working alongside the sorts of people who wouldn’t so much as blink before selling out their own mothers, he’s learned to never let his debts go unsettled if he can help it. As a general rule, he doesn’t incur them at all, but Arthur has a way of inspiring an exception to just about every bloody rule in the book.

“Speaking of Yusuf, that concoction of his is impressive.”

“I’ll tell him you said so,” Eames manages to say before his train of thought derails at the sight of Arthur licking grease off his finger, sucking a little at the tip, utterly unaware of how dangerously close Eames is to taking that hand and curling his tongue around every crease and crevice until Arthur’s flushed and falling apart at those meticulously tailored seams.

“I’m not feeling withdrawal at all. You think I can get him to tell me his secret?”

Eames leans back a little and frowns.

“You’ve stopped using it?”

“I’m sleeping just fine.” Arthur shrugs and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “I don’t like being hooked up to a machine when I’m not working.”

“What about the post-traumatic stress? Surely it can’t be cured that easily.”

Arthur blinks, uncomprehending, before he laughs, _laughs_ , and for a moment Eames isn’t sure if he should be hurt or delighted.

“You thought I had PTSD?” Arthur looks a little thrown, eyes bewildered but mouth yielding to something that looks remarkably like fondness in the dim lighting. “Eames, I had a few nights of insomnia, some anxiety, sure, but that’s not enough for a diagnosis. Trust me.”

 _Trust me_. It sounds cavalier but Eames understands the weight it carries. This bit of history Arthur never talked about much and Eames never pried, knowing what it’s like to be terrified of a part of himself that, despite the intervening years, remains too close for comfort. It’s when he conjures images of this much younger Arthur, perplexingly world-weary and inexperienced all at once, that he envies Mal the most, for having been there to assure and coax and hold Arthur through his darkest moments, and then to see him transform, from a raw sketch into a work of art.

“I was lucky I met Mal on one of my good days, when I was more willing to talk and less of an all-around asshole. More sober. And she was just lovely. Sunshine brightening the hellhole of booze and antidepressants I’d been living in for six long months. Honestly, when I looked up and saw her standing there, I thought she was about to tell me to fuck off before she called security because it was so obvious I didn’t fit in. I probably looked like a fucking psychopath trying to lure in beautiful, helpless architecture protégés.”

Arthur’s smiling a little but only for show, and Eames wants to touch him, frame his face with both hands and remind him of where he is, that there’s no slipping back as long as Eames has him.

“She convinced me to get some real help, from people who didn’t just feed me pills to get me off their case. It was still bad for a while after that, but not impossible. It didn’t feel like such a long shot to think things could be normal again. I still think about it most days, about what would’ve happened if Mal hadn’t found me, if I hadn’t fallen into dreamshare.”

Eames wants to ask where he fits into all of it but it feels too callous, too selfish. In truth, he’s just fucking terrified that there’s no longer a place for him, and in this moment it’s far too easy to imagine there never really was. That he hasn’t been dreaming since the accident; he’s been slowly waking up.

“I didn’t know,” he says quietly, sliding a hand into his pocket to be certain, even if the truth ends up breaking his heart.

Arthur watches him, teeth pulling at his lower lip as if he feels a slight pang of regret at his honesty.

“Have we been to Addis Ababa before?” 

The shift in conversation is so abrupt it takes Eames a second to understand.

“About a year ago, in July.”

“There are hailstorms in July.” Arthur trails off, frowning, eyes glancing to his right when the waitress reappears.

“We’ll get two coffees, please. Thank you. Yea, we got caught in a god awful one on our first night. You didn’t complain once about getting your suit wet, or hair for that matter. I nearly died from the shock.”

“Well it takes some work to look this good.” Arthur’s smile is cheeky, irrepressibly charming, and it’s a bloody wonder that he rarely uses it to get his way. 

“I rather like your lines a little rumpled,” Eames says, because he’s utterly fucked anyway; his self-preservation instinct never seems to kick in so well where Arthur’s concerned.

Arthur doesn’t reply, just leans back, looking more thoughtful than uncomfortable, shoulders relaxed, chin tilted, as though a little startled to find himself becoming accustomed to this, to Eames.


	6. Chapter 6

The new compound is delivered by courier, courtesy of Yusuf, padded with enough foam and bubble wrap to survive a ten-storey fall. They spend a full waking day running tests, from sunrise to sundown, hours upon hours prodding the stability of various dreamscapes. It’s the exact sort of cautious pragmatism Eames has little patience for, and while Cobb says he has his reasons, he predictably leaves them in the dark about what those reasons actually are. 

The one consolation is that, after three jobs, four cities, and one agonizing month of radio silence, Eames finally gets to see Arthur build.

The story is Arthur would’ve been an architect instead of a soldier if life had just worked out the way he planned it. What Eames sees in Arthur’s dreams is that he never quite let that possibility go. That dreaming, for better or for worse, is what keeps it alive and balanced precariously on his fingertips, inviting him to build kingdoms the world will never see.

Eames only needs ten minutes traversing Arthur’s seamless patchwork of dreamscapes to realize that the functionality Arthur stresses so tirelessly has no place in the dreams he builds for himself. Eames thinks if there’s any unifying element, then it’s _beauty_ , because it thrives in every bright space and darkened corner. Arthur builds without reservation, as though feverish with the idea that in dreams he’s no longer fettered by impossibility, and Eames touches none of it, just drinks it all in as it unfolds.

At the end of the hour they end up on a cliff overlooking an endless body of blue, its ripples composing glittering fractals under the midday sun.

“It’s magnificent,” Eames says, studying the angles of Arthur’s profile. “You’ve been holding out on me, darling.”

Arthur smiles and, without warning, the cliff dissolves under their feet until they’re standing on the shore, bare toes sifting through soft, fine sand.

“You know how people say, Rome wasn’t built in a day? Well, in a dream, it can be.”

It sounds like a secret Eames stumbled upon that he never should’ve found, and he senses, even though he can’t quite quantify, the privilege he’s been granted to stand beside this Arthur, different from the Arthur sleeping topside in ways that are enchanting and devastating in equal measures.

“When you put it that way, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to wake up.”

For a while Arthur doesn’t speak as a lively wind blows in from the sea, catching the edges of their jackets.

When he finally does, it’s with a little regret. 

“ _Le vent se lève. Il faut tenter de vivre._ ”

*

They’re packing to leave for New York in twelve hours when Eames finds Arthur sat on the sofa’s edge holding a stack of polaroids.

“When were these taken?”

He only needs to take one look to remember. They’d been married a month. It was a weekend getaway to Appenzell, the first break in a long string of jobs that had, by the end, taught them the value of moderation.

“Two months before the accident. I completely forgot about these.” 

He reaches over Arthur’s shoulder to take the top picture. It’s one of Arthur alone, reading by the fireplace of their rented cottage that afforded them a glorious view of the Alpstein. An idyllic, unfiltered quiet they always crave until they remember how little they care for it and take the next flight to the closest place they know will give them a little more loud and a little more dirty.

“We look—happy.” Even with the photographic evidence Arthur still sounds like he’s digging his heels in at the idea that he and Eames could be anything other than distinct and opposite forces.

“Don’t sound so sentimental.” The attempt at levity falls spectacularly flat and, for once, Eames has nothing better up his sleeve.

“Sorry,” comes half a beat later, but Arthur doesn’t look up, shuffling to the next picture, then the next, at a slow but relentless pace, until he stops at the last one. He’s laughing in it, mouth wide and eyes crinkled, reaching for the camera, or maybe for Eames; it makes no difference. The thing is, he doesn’t just look happy, he’s _incandescent_ , nearly unrecognizable in the way a person is when he’s been convinced for the better part of his life that reality could only ever be an imperfect substitute for a dream.

Arthur stares, and stares, shoulders hunched, rising gently with his breaths, until he finally sets the pictures down on the coffee table.

“Does Georgiana know?”

Eames walks around and adds the two in his hand to the pile, the edge of one now a little creased from the anxious press of his fingers.

“Of course not. She thinks I still have designs on some minor British royal who’s thirty-fourth in line for the throne. Or it might be the daughter of the Thai prime minister this time. Possibly both.”

It’s something of a pastime of his, spreading lascivious rumors about himself and seeing just how far they travel. While most people attach themselves to a single reputation, he’s industriously cultivated a multitude, scattering them indiscriminately from Lima to Bangkok, at least one for every identity he’s used and no more than three. And he takes note of how fast they spread and how deeply they take root, because, as an added bonus, it’s helped him accumulate a mental list of whom he can count on at a pinch to turn a spark into a wildfire.

“Anyway, the point is, I’m utterly insatiable and no one can possibly keep track.”

Arthur watches him with a careful little smile before returning his attention to his opened suitcase, items fastidiously organized by purpose and necessity.

“And where do I come into all of this?” he asks, as if he still doesn’t understand that his place is the only one that’s permanent.

“I work with the best, and you are the best. Your references couldn’t be more flawless if I’d forged them myself.” Eames pauses. “But, secretly, you’re the one I pine for, the one I flirt with shamelessly but only at a distance, because I know you’re much too good for me.”

Arthur hums vaguely in acknowledgement, busying himself with the zips on his suitcase, while Eames dares to think he sees a slight weakness in Arthur’s hands, a trembling that gives him away.

This time they’re running the job out of an old mercantile building at South Street Seaport that affords them a clear view of the East River and the queue of dormant ships, high masts stripped of their sails. 

When they walk in, Arthur stops short. The place looks like it’s been turned upside down then shaken about for good measure, file folders stacked precariously or already toppled, hardware and software strewn mostly on the floor, chairs haphazard, and in the middle of everything stands Georgie. Petite, fine-boned, lovely Georgie, glaring at her mobile and jabbing viciously at it with her thumbs.

“Yer aff yer _fucking_ heid, ya glaikit wanker. Get it up ye!”

“Should I start praying for the poor bastard’s soul?”

Georgie looks up and her eyes brighten instantly, mouth stretching into a radiant smile. She’s barely aged a day since she stitched him up three years ago in Edinburgh, no questions asked. They’d learned to trust each other before they learned to be cynics, and for seven-odd years it was the one thing he knew he could rely on, the single constant amid countless variables. Sometimes he regretted the circumstances that brought them together, usually short-lived and usually wretched, always thinking that one day they’d meet on purpose, find a nice view and drink champagne until they felt eighteen again.

“Well, aren’t ya a sight fer sore eyes. Geez a nip.”

She reaches out to frame Eames’s face with her hands, kissing him firmly on both cheeks, and she smells just as he remembers, like spring rain and wildflowers.

“I see you’ve settled in nicely.”

Something past his shoulder draws her attention away.

“Gonnae no dae that.”

He turns to see Arthur bent over to lift a box of portable drives off the floor, blinking at them as if he couldn’t possibly be expected to understand a word she just said.

“Leave it. There’s a method to her madness,” Eames assures, even though he knows it’s an exercise in futility; Arthur ranks clutter about as highly as ready-to-wear trousers.

“I’m sorry, where are my manners.” Georgie slips effortlessly into a standard English accent, long vowels elegant enough to give David Attenborough a run for his money. “You must be Arthur.”

“I—yes.” Arthur frowns. “Are you—I thought I heard you—”

“Linguistics is a fascinating field, isn’t it? You can affect the impression you have on someone, put them at ease or on edge, just by changing the way you speak.” She moves fluidly to Cockney, American, Australian, then back to the Queen’s English. “I’ve found the skill to be a particular advantage in our line of work.” 

Arthur’s eyebrows are nearly at his hairline. “I am impressed. But please don’t do it on my account. I’m adaptable.”

He’s wearing one those I’m-utterly-oblivious-to-how-delectable-I-look smiles and Georgie glances at Eames to tell him she’s already warming to this one.

“Eames said you like puzzles.”

And before Arthur can respond, she digs up a small object from the mess on the nearest table and throws it to him. He snatches it out of the air cleanly with one hand.

“A Rubik’s Cube?”

“Humor me.” Georgie leans against the table and crosses her arms.

“By which she means your entire reputation hangs in the balance.” Eames can’t help stirring the pot a little, knowing for a fact that neither Arthur nor Georgie could ever resist a bit of friendly competition.

Arthur says nothing and rotates the cube a few times before glancing at Georgie.

“Ready when you are.”

He solves it in 56 seconds, eight seconds slower than the last time Eames timed him at the kitchen table. Then again, he’s lost two years of practice.

He tosses it back to Georgie with a neat flick of his wrist.

“It’s my turn to be impressed.”

Arthur shrugs, although he looks mildly pleased at the compliment. Eames has always found this particular hobby of his both fascinating and endearing. Endearing because Eames has never seen anyone’s attention held for so long by such a small, passive thing, and fascinating because it’s once of the few instances where he divulges his remarkable aptitude for mathematics, and it makes Eames imagine what that would’ve meant for him if life had turned out the way he planned.

“I don’t have delusions about shattering world records or anything, but I like keeping my hands busy.”

“If you’re as good at your job as you are at this—”

“Oh,” Eames interjects, smile sharp, “he’s better.”

*

Montreal turns out to be trickier than they anticipated. The mark is a flighty, suspicious bastard and even with Arthur’s dirt and Eames’s references they still haven’t been able to get close enough to him or his numerous mistresses. Even Mal, with her infinite reserves of patience, is fed up by the soon-to-be third all-nighter in a row.

“This is miserable. It’s far too quiet in here. Let’s put on some music, shall we?”

Eames grunts a little but doesn’t look up from the company ledgers, his third read-through, which doesn’t make him at all pleased. While he’s perfectly capable with numbers and has something of a sixth sense for human error, he _hates_ getting stuck with the accounting. Unfortunately, he’s a consummate professional, and only complains when he’s certain he’ll get his way.

Strains of Edith Piaf float from the speakers of Mal’s computer.

“Arthur! Come dance with me.” Eames watches her pull Arthur, distracted but not unwilling, out of his chair. “Let us pretend for a while that we’re worlds away in a little cabaret off the _Champs-Élysées_ , witnessing the birth of a star.”

Then she starts to sing along to the music, voice at once soft and resonant, face glowing, beautifully transformed, as always, by thoughts of her beloved Paris.

Some minutes later a shadow falls across his lap as he’s flipping to the last page of his report.

“I never thought I’d call you out on being too hard-working.”

Arthur’s smiling, his dimensions cast in soft shades of ochre that make him look like a vintage photograph. The music is still playing. Mal and Cobb are swaying cheek to cheek, murmuring words meant only for each other.

“A moment of insanity, darling.” 

And they dance, with his palm splayed across the small of Arthur’s back, Arthur’s fingers brushing his nape, and that swooping sensation in his chest that tells him he’s in glorious freefall.

*

They devote the better part of two days just acquainting themselves with the ins and outs of high-frequency trading, slogging through memos, financial reports, activity logs, until they come to a single depressing conclusion.

“It’s a goddamn black box. There might literally only be three employees who can explain it better than the Wikipedia article.” Arthur flings his research onto the desk in disgust. “The rest of them sit on their asses, pressing the same two buttons, and watch the money flow in like cheap wine.” 

He tilts his chair back violently, trousers stretching obscenely over his thighs, and if Eames is momentarily distracted, it’s entirely justified.

“We don’t have to understand it, we just have to trust that Andreev understands it.” Georgie’s sitting cross-legged on her desk, chewing on her hair, one of her many tells that make her an utterly useless poker player.

“Andreev is another problem.” Eames swivels in his chair. “From what we’ve dug up so far, there’s no one he’s particularly close to. He leaves his wife at home with the children all day, comes home late at night, works most weekends. At this point he’s the black box we should be worried about.”

“I agree. We need to refocus our attention. These files have been pure dead worthless.”

“I think you’ve subjected your hair to quite enough abuse for one day, love,” he can’t help remarking with undisguised affection.

She immediately pulls the strand away from her mouth with a bit of chagrin. 

“I know, I’m disgusting. Habit I cannae seem to break.”

“I find it bizarrely endearing.”

“You tried curing me of it by mixing vinegar into my shampoo, ya bastart,” she reminds him, making no effort whatsoever to conceal her mirth.

“Only because I had your best interests at heart, love.”

Arthur chooses that moment to drop his chair with a resounding bang. Eames looks at him while he looks at everything but Eames, hands shuffling through the papers on his desk with no apparent purpose.

“As much as I love trips down memory lane, I think we’re getting a little far afield.”

The muscle at his jaw line tightens, indicative, Eames knows, of something he’s already decided he’s above giving into but can’t quite push down deep enough to keep it from betraying him.

So Eames bides his time and tries to do his job because he’s a professional and that’s what professionals do. And as the day wears on the three of them fall back into an easy pattern that makes him think that, given the right circumstances, they make a rather exceptional team, which he’s found over the years is bloody difficult to come by. Criminals are, on average, greedy, self-righteous, egomaniacal bastards, and dreamsharers are the worst of the lot, if only because they think they’re above it all, intermediaries at best between the truly corrupt. Not so dissimilar, actually, to the Wall Street traders who hired them.

And he says as much out loud as they’re packing up for the night.

“I, on the other hand, have no problem with conceding gracefully to all manner of sins.”

“Darlin’, tell me something I dinnae know.” Georgie throws him a cheeky smile as she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and Eames imagines, not for the first time, that they would’ve been good for each other in another life, but it’s not something he dwells on, not anymore.

“Bank statements and medical records are on here.” Arthur appears at her left and hands over a USB stick. “I’ve wiped all personal identifiers.”

“Yer spoiling me, ya know that? Everyone else will be pure rubbish after you.”

“The gold standard, he is.”

Arthur looks at Eames for just a second, eyes impenetrable, the muscle in his jaw clenching, before he smiles at Georgie and turns to leave.

“See you tomorrow.”

Eames catches up to him at the corner of William and Pearl. From the back he looks like the hundredth sharply dressed, overworked investment banker to walk down the street, but Eames would recognize that stride, those shoulders, anywhere.

“We’re staying at the same bloody hotel, you couldn’t have waited another three minutes?”

Arthur’s shrug is infuriatingly apathetic. 

“I thought we were keeping this strictly professional.”

It’s an absurd answer to a perfectly reasonable question, and for a moment Eames is at a loss.

“You agreed to take the job,” he finally says.

“I did. And it’s fine. I’m fine with it.”

Arthur’s getting more tight-lipped, words short and sharp, but Eames knows better than to let the anger fester behind those walls Arthur’s so fond of building.

“Georgie and I have history between us, I don’t deny that, but it’s history. That’s all it is.”

“I understand,” is all Arthur says in return and Eames wants to shake him by his shoulders until something breaks open, not caring whether it’s terrible or beautiful.

“For fuck’s sake, Arthur, don’t give me that.”

Arthur stops without warning.

“Christ, Eames, what do you want me to say?” His eyes gleam under the streetlamps.

“Something! Anything!” Eames drags a hand over his face. “I’ve been nothing but honest with you, from the very start. And I’ve waited patiently, I’ll wait forever if I bloody have to. But just—give me one fucking thing to work with. Just one.”

When Arthur finally answers, the sound is both terrible and beautiful.

“I want to remember our history. God, I want to. And it fucking kills me that I can’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _Le vent se lève. Il faut tenter de vivre._ " is a line from Paul Valéry's poem, _Le cimetière marin_. I was inspired to use it when watching _The Wind Rises_ (which is an utter masterpiece, you should see it IMMEDIATELY if you haven't yet). The main character, who is, funnily enough, voiced by JGL, reminded me uncannily of Arthur.
> 
> I have no idea how long it would take a fairly intelligent, diligent person to solve the Rubik's, but I do know the current world record is 5.55 seconds (and you can watch the record setter do it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCrTrtxAUbA; don't you just love the internet). 
> 
> What I understand of Scottish slang basically boils down to Wikipedia and YouTube videos, so I apologize if I've made a completely hash of it.


	7. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought it would be fun to turn the tables. Arthur deserves a say, after all.

As a general rule Arthur doesn’t mix work with pleasure, and he goes out of his way to surround himself with likeminded people, people genuinely in the business of dreams and not actually in the business of fucking around. But sometimes, when the job is too good to pass up, trouble is unavoidable. Assholes who think they know what he wants, that he’s just playing hard to get, being a cocktease, with his fitted layers and buttoned collars.

He can’t decide where Eames falls on the spectrum, if he falls anywhere at all, and that in itself is disconcerting. Every time he thinks he’s succeeded in drawing a line, Eames manages, in that perpetually cavalier way of his, to rub it away. Some days he’s a consummate professional and a genius to boot, forgeries fluid, organic, and beautifully flawed. Other days he’s an intolerable jackass, pushing Arthur’s buttons until Arthur thinks he’ll forever regret the day he set foot in Liverpool. 

And then, every so often, Eames watches him, wordlessly, with a sincerity so convincing he’d let it pull the ground out from under him if he didn’t know better. And, given his line of work, he’s long made a point of knowing better. Not that he hasn’t met men like Eames; he’s met plenty of men like Eames. Men who play fast and loose with life, thinking it’s a waste to do it any other way. Men with a habit of collecting things and people, people and things, thinking they’re interchangeable. 

Only in the seconds right before he falls asleep at night, reality slipping away, does he surrender to the possibility that he might be wrong.

*

Most days he can’t say he’s absolutely certain he’s awake. Most nights he rolls his die across the bathroom counter, twice, just to be safe. 

By the time they return from Mombasa, he’s gathered enough conviction that he can pass the time alongside Eames without feeling like he’s in Limbo slowly losing his mind. Which isn’t to say he’s any less terrified when Eames looks at him, affection immeasurable, tireless, bearing down on his chest like it’s hell-bent on breaking his heart. But it’s not the kind of terror he’s acquainted with, the kind that grabs him by the throat and squeezes while his legs dangle and kick in the air. It creeps in slowly, steadily, makes his bones ache something fierce, then retreats without a sound.

When he does dream, it’s rarely out of the ordinary. The jagged, snow-tipped peaks of the Hindu Kush rising above a smell of destruction that clings to the air close to the ground. Quiet corners of Paris in the early morning interrupted only by the sweet crunch of a fresh baguette. The _rarely_ comes when Eames shows up like he’s a welcome intrusion and upsets the dreamscape, causing it to shift into places Arthur can only identify with a little deduction. A canal in Venice. An open-air festival in Bogotá. But Eames always looks the same, Eames with his mortally offensive paisley tie and smile that suggests he knows something Arthur doesn’t. He calls Arthur darling in that presumptuous way of his and leads them through crumbling _hu tong_ and sprawling _piazze_ like he’s been appointed the fucking tour guide of Arthur’s subconscious. 

He’s invaded Arthur’s dreams before, but never so persistently and in so much unsettling detail—the musky, amber base notes of his cologne, the scar below his jaw line, small but deep, that’s only visible when he tilts his head. Details that combine to assault Arthur’s senses and make him hyperaware of his position relative to Eames, the exact distance between them, which Eames seems to enjoy shrinking down to nonexistent at every opportunity. 

It’s the dreams that make him a little jumpy, a little off kilter in a way he’s not quite used to. He dumps Yusuf’s compound down the drain in one of his more irrational moments and all it buys him are dreams that crumble without so much as a warning and leave him blinking at the ceiling, body still paralyzed but heart racing, trying to remember the last thing Eames said to him. 

He thinks he spends most of his time trying to remember, recovering his life instead of living it, hoarding the pieces as they pop up in hopes that one of them will trigger an avalanche. Pieces he turns over and over again, with one exception. A letter Eames wrote him dated December 18, two years ago, that he read once before slipping back between the pages of an old moleskine where he found it, and hasn’t touched since. Cream-colored half-sheets with a navy blue border, folded once and tucked into an envelope addressed to his sister’s apartment in Detroit. Three in total, filled edge-to-edge with Eames’s chicken scratch, painful to behold but somehow perfectly legible. It starts off with something like this: _Happy Christmas, darling. I hope you’re glad to see I’ve done my part in trying to salvage the lost art of letter writing._ It ends with something like this: _At the risk of sounding unforgivably sentimental—it is Christmas after all—this house isn’t the same without you, and neither am I._ He doesn’t return to it, but sometimes he pictures the ink flowing across the page from a pen Eames holds loosely in his hand, mouth moving silently as he composes his love letter.

Truth is, everything seems to lead back to Eames one way or another, although Arthur never asks. He knows better than anyone the consequences of shaking out a person’s past. It’s almost always the case that he gets more than he bargained for, which is exactly what he wants when he’s looking to spook his mark but exactly what he can’t deal with when it’s his own past he’s shaking out, not yet. He realizes he’s fallen back into the old habit of only being honest with himself five times out of ten, one of those misguided, short-term solutions to a long-term problem, but it’s the best he can do when the truth still feels like a kick in the teeth. It really isn’t so dissimilar from the year and a half he spent failing to adjust to civilian life, except this time he’s bingeing on coffee instead of booze, burning through packs of spearmint gum instead of Luckies, and rather than ducking at the imagined sounds of enemy fire, he’s ducking Eames and those eyes that come at him as lethal as a shot to the heart.

“You look well, _mon cher_.” It’s what Mal says every time they meet and he’s slowly coming to believe it. “More and more like yourself. How are things going with Eames?”

It’s not like Mal to beat around the bush, one quality of hers that made them kindred spirits from the start. She doesn’t put up with bullshit or dish it out, and she achieves it all with remarkable diplomacy. It’s also no secret that she’s fond of Eames, although that’s not what keeps Arthur up some nights. It’s her fondness of Eames _with Arthur_ that drives him crazy until the question that sticks to the roof of his mouth he can’t get unstuck is what she sees in them that makes her so damn convinced.

“They’re going fine.” He sips his _café_ and pokes at his croissant.

“Arthur.” She adopts the tone she reserves exclusively for the moments when Arthur insists on being a stubborn son of a bitch.

“It’s still confusing, all right? Sometimes we get along just fine and he’s perfectly fucking pleasant to live with. Sometimes I think I might have a panic attack because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, shacking up with a _thief_ who, last I heard, impersonated a priest to steal a 14th century triptych from the Vatican, then eloped with an Italian heiress. Maybe not in that order.”

Mal smiles brightly. “Your information is out of date.”

Arthur sighs. “That’s not the point.”

They sit in silence for a moment, watching Paris wake up, life pervading its streets and its air, and Arthur soaks it all up, knowing Mal won’t let him off so easy.

“Is it so hard to believe that you’re happy with him? That you’re _happy_?” 

It’s a notion she’s worked hard over the years to convince him to discard along with the rest of the rubble that’s weighed him down. The notion that there are things he’s done that make him sick to his stomach, skeletons in his closet he can never destroy, only bury, and he’s prepared to spend a long time, maybe the rest of his life, atoning for them.

“Don’t cheat yourself out of a good thing.”

“I thought I already had a good thing going,” and it’s the truth, even if it’s a feeble one.

Mal pauses, letting him cling to it for a second, because she once believed it, too.

“Dreams can’t sustain you forever, Arthur. You have to wake up sooner or later. It’s what you wake up to that’s up to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and THANK YOU, again, for the lovely comments. They really help keep me going. <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quicker update, to make up for the paltry length of the last one. IT'S DRAWING TO A CLOSE GUYS. Can't thank you enough for your feedback so far.

In Bogotá he kills a man. 

There’s less blood than he would’ve imagined—he’s been told it’s always neater in a dream—but it spatters the front of his shirt a little, like paint flicked off a paint brush. He stares at the slack jaw and unseeing eyes before turning to empty the contents of his stomach onto the dirt road, just missing his shoes. Arthur lets him wipe his mouth on his sleeve and take a total of two breaths before pulling him away with hard fingers around his elbow, back through Soacha where there would be two more bodies found by morning, downed with the aim of a marksman, likely ex-military.

When they get back to the hotel Arthur’s already on his mobile, making deals to get them out of the city, preferably the continent. Eames only stops to shed his shoes, socks, and jacket before getting into the shower, extremities numb, tasting blood in the back of his throat. 

It’s where Arthur finds him a quarter of an hour later, letting the hot water trickle into his mouth, one hand flat against the tiles, the other clutching his poker chip as if at any moment he might slip back into a dream. 

“Cobb and Mal are heading to the Maldives. Impromptu vacation.” 

Arthur steps in and wraps loose fingers, one by one, around his wrist to turn him around, and the skin-on-skin contact makes him twitch and ache.

“I didn’t know.” Arthur’s eyes are the loveliest he’s ever seen, dark and saturated with empathy.

No one knows; he’s made sure of it. Seven years in dreamshare without having killed a man topside is not the kind of reputation that’d get him far.

Instead he says: “you’ve ruined your tie.” 

Silk twill Hermès in a previously magnificent sky blue, already soaked through.

Arthur blinks, glancing down, and with his fingers still around Eames’s wrist, he smiles.

“Mr. Eames, sometimes your priorities are really fucked up.”

*

All he can think about when he tries to sleep that night is Arthur’s admission, so he doesn’t sleep. He turns the words over and over in his head, Arthur’s mouth shaped around them, Arthur’s intonation, sincere no matter how he weighs and reweighs it. The last thing he wanted was for Georgie to get under Arthur’s skin or upset their delicate equilibrium. Professionally, he would’ve accounted for the possibility; he hates seeing a job go to waste because someone was daft enough to let a contingency slip through the cracks. But nothing about Arthur has ever fallen exclusively into the realm of _professional_ , while everything about Arthur has the potential to make him lose his head. With Cobb and Mal the distinction is hardly relevant. Georgie, however, is a new variable he never should’ve introduced into an already messy equation. But he’s only ever slightly more inclined than Arthur to walk away from a job when nothing’s tipped them off that it might go horribly wrong, which is to say not very inclined at all, especially when he still feels like he owes Georgie everything, even if they decided a long time ago to call it even.

So he gets out of bed at an ungodly hour and decides that tailing their mark on his morning walk through Central Park rather than knocking down Arthur’s door—to ask him if he meant what he said, just in case—will do his head some good.

By the time he gets back to the seaport, he’s already called in the references he needs to ingratiate himself with Andreev’s boss, who looks painfully young and green and succumbs much too easily to flattery. He sits down at his desk, leaning back and propping up his feet, feeling smugly accomplished.

“Put your feet down, your socks are blinding me,” Arthur remarks without much bite, eyes sliding away from Eames just as Eames turns to him.

“They’re positively cheerful, aren’t they?” He hitches his trouser legs up a little higher so Arthur can get a better look at the lurid red speckled with tiny mistletoe, which he packed accidentally but was delighted to discover. And because Georgie’s nowhere to be found, he adds, “you bought them for me.”

 _That_ gets Arthur to look up from his work. “Was I _high_?”

“You were fully in control of your faculties, darling. Just bored out of your mind at the Detroit airport.”

Arthur frowns, hesitating. “Why was I—never mind. It’s fucking July, Eames. No one should be wearing Christmasy anything in July. It’s a travesty. Even if I did buy you those socks, I definitely meant for you to wear them when it’s _actually Christmas_.”

It’s utterly delightful when Arthur gets so wound up about things that aren’t normally seen as Topics for Heated Debate, an inclination Eames attributes partly to Arthur being a person with endlessly fascinating quirks, and partly to Arthur’s fondness for telling Eames he’s wrong.

“What about Christmas?” Georgie walks in juggling her computer bag, her coffee, her mobile, and an assortment of file folders. “Do you know how many Americans have asked me if we celebrate Christmas in Ireland?”

“Arthur has dual citizenship. He’s _cultured_.”

“I’m also not an idiot.” Arthur shoots Eames a withering look, as if Eames hasn’t done enough to defend his honor.

Georgie dumps everything unceremoniously into the general vicinity of her workspace and then presses her lips into a thin line.

“So apparently we’re not the first team Smith & Leeland have hired to get to Andreev.”

Eames freezes mid-swivel. “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

She shakes her head, taking a violent swig of her coffee like it might’ve magically turned into something five times stronger.

“ _Jesus_.” Arthur looks about as blindsided as Eames feels. “Who was it?”

“Vega was the extractor. I’ve never heard of him.”

“Did Andreev catch on?”

Georgie pauses. “They’re not sure. They don’t think so.”

“They don’t think so,” Arthur repeats as if he can’t think of any universe in which he would find that a remotely acceptable answer. 

Eames closes his eyes briefly and rubs his forehead. “Do we think this is part of some bigger plan they have to screw us? Why tell us now?”

“They claim they dinnae think it mattered.” Georgie flops down into her chair and lets her head fall back. “I’m inclined to believe them. They don’t think anything outside their billion-dollar Wall Street bubble matters, so they can’t be arsed to do the research. Smug, lazy wankers the lot of them.”

“We can walk away. They’ve given us bloody good reason to.”

Eames slides further down his chair, splaying his legs, and watches Arthur’s teeth slide over his bottom lip, shirt pulling across his shoulders as he leans forward, attesting to its impeccable fit. 

He knows Arthur’s caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand they might be blowing this out of proportion and the job could go off without a hitch. It’s an interesting one, no doubt, given that Andreev has so far been hard to crack, and Arthur always enjoys puzzles that are hard to crack. On the other hand, he hates wasted time, probably more than he hates free time, which, for a while, Eames had successfully convinced him to not hate so much.

“I’m going to see it through, as much as it’s possible to see through. If you two want nothing to do with it, I’ll understand.”

“You won’t be able to do it alone.” Arthur’s eyes flicker to Eames, telling Eames what he can’t quite say out loud—that he knows a thing or two about history, loyalty, and he’ll stay if Eames does.

Eames smiles. “So we’ll see it through.”

“But we need to get on their asses about transparency. They need to hand over everything they have on the last job. Saved communications, recorded transactions. If they have fucking coffee receipts, we’ll take them.”

Oh, but he does love it when Arthur takes charge and lays down the law, all flashing eyes and coiled energy. More often than not he’s content with taking orders, a force of habit the army took pleasure in drilling into him early on, Eames has no doubt. But he really can be a bloody force to be reckoned with when the occasion calls for it.

“I say if they lack the incentive to learn how we do things, then we give them a little incentive.” He passes his poker chip through his fingers, over and under then back again, a little habit he picked up when he’d been stranded in the Outback for three days with nothing but a packet of airline peanuts and a pocketknife.

Georgie purses her lips thoughtfully. “Bring them into a dream?”

“Don’t make it sound so pedestrian, love. We’ll shake things up. Dreamshare is a serious business, after all. Not for the faint of heart.” He turns to Arthur, who smiles at him for the first time since they touched down in JFK, as if they’re finally seeing eye-to-eye.

*

He learns quickly that with Arthur, the most mundane routines become infinitely delightful, in part because Arthur is so fastidious about them, motions exacting and elegant in equal measures. 

Eames’s current favorite, because he can never settle on one for long, is getting ready in the morning. More specifically, watching Arthur get ready in the morning while luxuriating in the embroidered percale sheets Arthur gets shipped directly from some Italian mill or other using one of his many connections that never seem to expire or give him trouble. 

Arthur’s mornings always proceed in the same order. He brushes his teeth, showers, then shaves, hand perfectly steady around his straight razor, moving in light, practiced strokes as his eyes follow diligently. It’s when he drops his head back at the very end to drag the blade below his chin, movement slowing, fingers of his free hand pressed against his throat, that Eames feels himself getting hard at the sight, at the thought of the damage Arthur’s capable of inflicting armed only with a strip of stainless steel the length of his palm. In fact he’s witnessed it first hand, two levels down in a dream where Arthur decided it was more efficient to slit throats than to shoot.

But after that is when Arthur dresses, and when Eames truly tests the limits of his self-control. Because while helping Arthur out of his clothes is undeniably rewarding, the drawn-out spectacle of Arthur getting into them is unexpectedly and unbearably erotic. The dexterity of his fingers as they button his shirt, no unwanted crease in sight, the intimate slide and pull of wool encasing his calves then his thighs, the subtle shift of silk against cotton as he ties his tie. And his hands, improbably methodical no matter how hard Eames tries to distract him.

*

Arthur’s wearing glasses when Eames walks through the door the next morning and he proceeds to think, as he nearly trips over his own feet in alarm, that the world is being unreasonably cruel. Because, frankly, the only thing sexier than Arthur is Arthur in eyeglasses, and he’s a little frantic now because his thoughts are moving swiftly towards dangerous territory, territory that, for the past three weeks, he’s managed for the most part to confine to the hours when there’s at least twenty meters of space and a solid wall between them. 

“Is something wrong?” Arthur blinks, eyes somehow brighter and more guileless.

“You’re wearing glasses today.” Eames sets his bag down calmly at the foot of his desk.

Arthur looks at him oddly. “Yea, I, um, slept in my contacts last night.”

“Right.” An image of Arthur on his knees, mouth red, slick, and wrapped around Eames, watching him through those square black frames, surfaces unbidden. “Right. Coffee anyone? I know a delightful little place down the street that also makes a mean apricot Danish.”

There’s nothing fresh air, a smoke or three, and breakfast tea can’t cure. Although he suspects, at this rate, he might need a defibrillator.

“Black, and a Danish for me, thanks, love,” Georgie says without glancing up from her computer.

“I’ll come with you.” Arthur rises, smoothing two fingers down the slate grey textured tie Eames bought him in Dubai, as proof he has an eye, if not a taste, for subtlety, and he swallows, feeling a little light-headed. “Just to make sure you don’t get me some undrinkable flavor combination like peppermint peach.”

True, he experimented with Arthur’s cappuccino before they flew out of de Gaulle, but it’s not his fault Arthur’s tastes are so particular and boring. He thought peppermint peach was an ingenious combination, although, also true, he didn’t try it before handing it over.

As soon as they exit the building he pulls out his cigarettes, tapping the packet to extract one and put it between his lips before fishing for his lighter.

“Smoking kills.” Arthur glances at him with a slight turn of his head, hands in his pockets as they walk deeper into the financial district.

Eames lights it and takes a slow drag, holding in the smoke for a second before blowing it out through one corner of his mouth, anxiety instantly easing.

“Your look of disapproval isn’t as scary as you think it is,” he says, suppressing a smile.

“Maybe. Or you’re just irredeemable.” It’s one of those statements that would sound perfectly innocent if anyone else were stating it. When Arthur states it, it sounds positively scandalous, as if Eames might seduce him to the dark side at any moment, mouth hot and wicked against his ear.

“Mm, now that one’s entirely true.”

Arthur’s lips twitch and for the next few minutes they walk in comfortable silence. It’s when they’re standing in the queue for coffee that Arthur breaks it.

“How did I get the scar above my right knee?”

Eames has to say he didn’t see that one coming. It’s clearly not a question Arthur pulled out of thin air, and Eames wonders for just how long it’s been festering.

“You fell out of a third-storey window in Venice. Canal side, thank god. You of course proved to be a very capable swimmer.”

“I _fell_?” Arthur raises his eyebrows.

“Someone really hated your guts,” Eames clarifies helpfully, which, judging by the look on Arthur’s face, he takes as par for the course. “I’m afraid I did a piss poor job of stitching you up.”

“Don’t tell me you get queasy at the sight of blood.”

“Only yours,” Eames confesses freely.

Arthur looks startled for a moment, eyes a fraction wider, before a small, unconscious smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. And because they’re standing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder now and Arthur’s worst fear is being seen in public with a crooked tie, Eames reaches out to fix his tie bar, slipping two fingers underneath his shirt to nudge the clip up so it sits perfectly between his third and fourth buttons.

Arthur clears his throat. “Thanks.”

When Eames looks up, Arthur’s lips are parted and damp as if he just licked them, cheeks infused with a little more warmth. He’s breathing shallowly against the fingers Eames hasn’t removed, and he thinks he definitely needs another bloody cigarette.

“Sir, can I help you?”

He snatches his hand away and turns to the cashier, a gangly, bleary-eyed kid who looks utterly disinterested in the fact that he was just molesting another man’s dress shirt.

“Ah—yes, three apricot Danishes, your strongest black tea blend, one black coffee, and—you don’t have any seasonal syrup flavors at the moment, do you?”

He’s barely finished the thought when Arthur jabs him squarely in the ribs and makes it look purely accidental. 

“Make that two black coffees, one dark roast. _No_ syrup, thank you,” Arthur instructs in his way that leaves no room for argument, entirely oblivious to the fact that it just gets Eames all the more hot and bothered, which he smoothly covers up by pouting.

“All work and no play.”

Arthur’s cuffs slide up a little to expose the sharp peak of his left wrist bone as he reaches out to take the coffees, the right one obscured by the black-strapped Burberry watch he only really wears because he takes perverse pleasure in checking it pointedly when someone’s incompetency puts him behind schedule.

“A time and a place, Mr. Eames. A time and a place.”

It’s only when they get back and his first sip of his tea sends him into a coughing fit that he realizes Arthur snuck ground cinnamon into it when he wasn’t looking. The conniving, insufferable, sexy bastard.

“Something wrong with your tea?” Arthur inquires, the epitome of innocence and, fuck, if it doesn’t make Eames want to push him down onto his desk and do unspeakable things to him, even when he’s just ruined Eames’s tea, an offense that would demand terrifying retribution if it had been committed by anyone else.

“It’s unexpectedly—spicy.” Eames thinks he might’ve sucked cinnamon into his lungs.

Georgie’s looking at both of them oddly, eyes slightly narrowed.

“Hargrove just sent me his blood work results. I say we do a run through of the dream right before our meeting tomorrow.”

“Wouldn’t hurt.” Arthur leans back in his chair, tapping his pen against his thigh. “I’ve cast a pretty wide net to get the background we need on Vega, but I should hear back from all my sources by morning.”

Not to be outdone, Eames says, “I’ve been trying out a new blonde, lovely, sharp, killer legs. You’ll have to tell me if she’s up to scratch.”

“Stroke your ego, you mean,” Georgie teases.

“Alas, forgers are a demanding, insufferable lot. You can only appease them with flattery.” Or impeccably dressed point men, he thinks, as he looks at Arthur, who watches him from behind his glasses with something heart-stoppingly close to affection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, yes, I gave Eames an Arthur-in-eyeglasses kink. Because this: http://spectacle.provocateuse.com/images/spectacles/joseph_gordon_levitt_03.jpg.


	9. Chapter 9

He wakes to grey cracked walls and the feeling of a thumb drawing slow soothing circles on the soft skin of his inner wrist. 

It’s murder opening his eyes under the fluorescent light and his mouth’s as dry as the Sahara, but his body feels fucking fantastic. Awareness trickles in lazily, fuzzy at the edges. Even having flushed the stuff out of his system ages ago he feels it seducing him, a warm, thrilling weight curling in his gut.

He shifts with some effort, following the line with a flailing hand to slow the drip.

“You’re awake.” It’s Arthur’s voice by the bed, colored with naked relief, Arthur’s hand curling around his to lead it to where it’s trying to go.

This time he makes a more concerted effort to keep his eyes open, blinking at Arthur’s contours, waiting for them to settle and sharpen, and when they do, he sees Arthur’s utter exhaustion. His eyes dull, bloodshot, and atrociously bruised, anxiety etched into his forehead and around his mouth. Still he’s a fucking beautiful sight, and Eames remembers now, thinking right before he went into shock that he needed to get one more good look at Arthur on the off chance that Barro was a better shot than they’d given him credit for.

“Am I—” he starts, but Arthur’s already pressing his poker chip into his palm, closing his fingers over it and smiling, right dimple just a little more persistent than the left.

“Turns out you have someone looking out for you in Kinshasa.”

So that’s how he got a cot and a morphine drip in one of the few clinics with reliable electricity charged with servicing a city of 10 million.

“I knew throwing that game of blackjack would pay dividends. Slippery bastard, though. Bloody difficult to track on short notice.”

Difficult even for Arthur, who can pick up on a scent like a bloodhound, but Arthur just fixes him with a look that says, for someone who stakes his entire reputation on being clever, he can really excel in stupidity.

“I had the right kind of incentive.”

*

It’s well past sundown when they leave for the night, Arthur weighed down with the work he’ll be continuing back at the hotel and Eames weighed down with less-than-proper thoughts of Arthur continuing his work, splayed on his bed, glasses slipping down his nose, layers still intact, just loosened, because that was his definition of winding down before Eames came along. 

And with nightfall blanketing the streets in obscurity, those thoughts unravel freely. Arthur discarding his tie and unbuttoning his top buttons to reveal the hollow of his throat, then rolling his cuffs to his elbows, tendons flexing, sharp and sleek. Arthur dampening his lower lip with a flick of his tongue then catching it between his teeth in concentration, fingertips digging absentmindedly into an ache in his shoulder. This is the way Arthur transitions, with lingering resistance, into restfulness, tense and ignorant of his need to be thoroughly fucked until Eames pins him to the bed and rocks his hips just so, sliding his tongue along the curve of Arthur’s throat, adding a scrape of teeth for good measure.

He doesn’t realize they’ve stepped into the lift until it chimes to signal its ascent, and then it’s just him and Arthur in a slow-moving steel cage, the length of which he can cover in two paces, one if he’s determined.

“We got more than we bargained for.”

For a moment he can only watch the shape of Arthur’s mouth as it wraps around the sounds, settling in the end in a natural pout that brings out the lovely bow of his upper lip. 

“Just when I thought the job would be a complete bore.”

Arthur looks at him askance as the doors open and they make their way down the corridor. 

“Does _anything_ keep your attention for more than ten minutes?”

It’s a bloody daft question, and he’s about to point it out when Arthur stops abruptly to pull out his keycard, sliding it into the door. He steps over the threshold and drops his bag onto the floor before turning around, one hand holding the door open, the other flat against the frame.

“You didn’t really have to walk me to my room.” The words are fastidiously free of emotion, and Eames watches his jaw clench.

“I’m sure you’ve noted the appalling state of hotel security. You never know what unsavory characters might be lurking in the corridor.” 

Eames isn’t quite sure anymore what he’s saying, but what he’s not saying is _I’d like to come in, I’d like to kiss you, I want to kiss you. I want_.

“I think I can fend for myself just fine. But I appreciate your concern.” Arthur’s eyes are suddenly warmer, darker, and Eames feels a sharp yank on his heart before he feels Arthur’s hand take a fistful of his shirt. “I really do.”

Then Arthur’s dragging him through the door and manhandling him around the room, mouth descending on his, hot and insistent, as he drops down hard into an armchair with a lap full of Arthur, straining to touch and be touched. It’s not really a kiss, and certainly not a nice one. It’s the violent conclusion of three fucking weeks’ worth of sexual tension, and it’s more teeth than lips, no finesse, painful, messy, utterly _filthy_ , and it all shoots straight to his cock. Arthur’s weight on him, deliciously heavy but nothing he can’t throw easily onto a bed, Arthur’s sharp clean scent, the taste of Arthur searing and slick on his tongue, sweet balancing bitter. It feels like it’s been so fucking long since he’s had Arthur like this, all but pleading for it with those little breathy moans that stick to the back of his throat, hips rocking against Eames like he could get himself off right here, fully clothed. 

They’ve had each other in more ways than he can count. Arthur spread on the kitchen table, bare from the waist down, French cuffs still encasing his wrists, tie still knotted, because he knows it drives Eames crazy, the cavalier way he treats his clothes whenever Eames fucks him. Eames tied down to the bed face down so he could be rimmed within an inch of his life, with ties that Arthur makes a point of wearing in the days after to remind him of how shamelessly he wanted it. 

But this, this somehow feels like the first fucking time, with his toes curling in his shoes and Arthur’s hands shaking as they pull at his shirt to reach for bare skin. Even when he already knows all the small, intimate ways he can get Arthur’s spine to arch, violent and sweet, and Arthur to vocalize his pleasure without swallowing it down. So Eames just clings to him, hips finding a smooth easy rhythm with Arthur’s, deciding there are worst things in the world than coming in his trousers like a teenager and not just because he’s been fucking celibate for three sodding weeks.

When Arthur finally pulls away a little to heave for air, Eames drags his mouth down Arthur’s chin, laving at the cord of muscle along Arthur’s neck before latching on and _sucking_ , at the spot right below his jaw line so he’ll be able to see the mark, in the shape of Eames’s mouth, when he shaves in the morning. Then he sets about divesting Arthur of his jacket, tie, and shirt, hands as efficient as Arthur’s when he’s putting them on—because Eames’s knack for imitation has no limits—mouth mapping the skin that’s revealed, inch by painstaking inch.

Then Arthur says, “ _Eames_ ,” voice low and ruined, and it’s like a brute force kick that wakes him up when he had no idea he was dreaming.

He sucks in a breath and stills for a second, mouth hovering over Arthur’s shoulder, before gripping Arthur’s hips and pulling back.

Arthur’s eyes are half-lidded and dark as pitch, mouth slick and swollen, skin flushed from cheeks to clavicle, obscenely, maddeningly beautiful, and it’s not what Eames wants. He doesn’t want Arthur willing now and resentful in the morning. Or worse, Arthur not giving a fuck, thinking he can take Eames to bed without the strings attached, like it’s some sort of fucking _arrangement_ that’s mutually beneficial. He wants what they had, even knowing it’s irrational and selfish of him to want it. He wants Arthur at night, utterly filled and wrecked and unraveled by him, and Arthur in the morning, soft-limbed but whole and _there_ when he wakes up. 

“This is a mistake.” It doesn’t come out at all the way he intended, his head still fogged with lust, tongue thick and slow, and Arthur flinches like he’s been slapped with the back of a hard hand.

His fingers, still around Eames’s shoulders, curl before he pushes off Eames and backs away until he reaches the opposite wall, cobbling together what’s left of his dignity as he yanks his shirt into place and buttons it, eyes shuttered tightly with no room for mistakes.

“Arthur.” Eames rarely wastes his time regretting choices that can’t be undone, but for a terrifying moment he thinks this one he could end up regretting for the rest of his life.

“Get out.” Arthur’s voice breaks on the first syllable, then hardens. “ _Get out_.”

Eames leaves without another word, returning to the darkness of his own room and letting the taste of Arthur in his mouth haunt him until morning.

*

Eames isn’t the sort to panic when things go pear-shaped. It’s a trait that often tips the scales in his favor when his name comes up for a job, netting out some of his more troublesome qualities that might frame him as a liability—his predilection for flying by the seat of his pants, his tendency to follow instructions only when he feels like it.

In Fortaleza, he panics. 

Five minutes into the dream the entire underground station starts trembling from the bottom up, and he knows something’s wrong topside. It’s Arthur’s dream, and Arthur’s dreams never tremble. 

Sousa’s projections are turning to them now, every last one congregated on the platform, and he thinks it’s the last time he’ll ever agree to putting a dream level at the peak of rush hour.

The train pulls in on rattling tracks and Kumar is nowhere to be found in the surging crowds. But he reckons the most immediate concern is that he’s not armed. Rather, he _can’t_ arm himself, not even with a bloody paper knife.

“Arthur.”

Arthur’s standing empty-handed and still as a statue, looking worried, which makes Eames very, very worried.

“Higher ground. Then we figure out a game plan.” Neither of them has quite banished the fear of being buried alive since Glasgow.

They take off at a brisk pace. By the time Eames gets to street level, he’s lost Arthur.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says succinctly before breaking into a run, streets shifting and cracking beneath his feet.

And with the sounds of growing pandemonium pressing in on all sides, he thinks about Arthur, about all the scenarios they could find themselves in when they wake up, each more grim than the last, and about changing his face, because it’s always been an instinct of his to make sure he’s someone else entirely in a bad situation. 

He’s covered maybe two more kilometers before he realizes he’s forged Arthur, and he almost laughs out loud. It’s actually reassuring. The lighter frame, the sleeker muscles, even the trousers that mold in disturbing ways to his arse and thighs. Because Arthur excels in bad situations, Arthur never panics, Arthur—

And then he’s nearly run over by a moped careening around the corner.

“Jesus Christ.” The real Arthur stares, seemingly less troubled by nearly killing Eames than by Eames borrowing his face. “Get on. And do something about— _that_. It’s creepy as fuck, what is wrong with you.”

“Buildings were falling on my head and I couldn’t find you. Can you blame me for being a little distressed?” He clambers on, curling his own hands around Arthur’s waist, and Arthur says nothing, just presses back against him to tell him to hold on tighter before taking them away.

*

To the casual observer, the next day starts off like any other day. Arthur is competent, composed, and civil, professionalism as unbroken as the lines of his suit. But Eames knows he’s a master at compartmentalizing, at isolating potential catastrophes within soundproof walls and then pretending they don’t exist. Employing brute force to open Arthur up would be the equivalent of trying to knock down a steel door with his shoulder, which, needless to say, would get him little more than a sore shoulder. What it comes down to is strategy, searching for a weak spot, a spot Arthur missed, and wearing it down, because contrary to popular belief, Arthur is human and humans are rife with weaknesses. Arthur just disguises them well, like any respectable criminal does.

The idea is all well and good. The execution, though, requires not a small amount of forbearance, something Eames is sorely lacking, if only because of the way he left Arthur last night, clearly nursing the misconception that his reluctance was a rejection despite the utterly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. By the time Arthur finishes his coffee, he's already made his pen explode in his hand in an effort to keep from walking over and shaking Arthur by the shoulders until he hears some sense rattling in that lovely, stupid head. Add to that the mark right below Arthur’s jaw line he catches sight of when Arthur tips his head back, a violent purple diminished but not hidden under a layer of carefully applied concealer, and he thinks the day is well and truly fucked.

When Arthur stands up to prep the PASIV for their run-through, Georgie vindicates the general sentiment.

“Fucking balls,” she says eloquently as Arthur sets the timer with a few vicious jabs of his forefinger. “Need to meet my chemist uptown. She says she might have a moment tomorrow before her flight, but best not leave anything to chance. As it is, this job is not going the way I hoped. I won’t make it back before Hargrove arrives, though.” 

“We’ll take care of Hargrove. Arthur and I were forced to bring a tourist on board once.” Arthur’s motions still for a heartbeat before resuming again. “He accidentally pushed our mark in front of a bus. It can’t possibly go any worse than that.”

Georgie lets out a short laugh as she snaps her laptop shut. “If you were a doctor, your bedside manner would be terrifying.”

“You never know.” He rolls up his sleeve and pauses, sidetracked temporarily when Arthur positions his backside squarely in Eames’s line of sight. “I’ve forged quite a few doctors. A pediatric oncologist for three days. My patients adored me.” 

Arthur unspools two lines and drops one into his lap, eyes informing him in a frank but entirely professional manner that he’s perfectly capable of inserting his own damn cannula.

“I gave us ten minutes. Should be plenty of time to build a dream sufficient to impress these assholes.”

Without another glance at Eames, he hits the trigger.

They’d all agreed they needed a balance of familiar and exotic, something with both detail and scope to play up what they do, make them look like kings toying with empires in the palms of their hands. And as Eames surveys the spectacle of Times Square nestled into the center of Hanoi, skyscrapers dissolving into silk shops, modern into 13th century, he thinks, smiling, that it’ll just about do it.

“Magnificent,” he says, inhaling the bewildering smell of sweet roasted nuts and _bún chả_. “Although that corner there seems to be lacking a little pizzazz. La Boqueria would clash nicely.”

“Change that corner and my subconscious will tear you to pieces.” 

Arthur’s unfeeling delivery makes it sound like more of a threat than a warning. The funny thing is, it makes Eames think he’s finally getting somewhere.

“Violence is rarely the answer, darling. Can’t we just talk it out?”

Arthur finally turns to him with something churning in his eyes, heavy enough to pull him under. A heavyset man in a pinstriped suit jostles his shoulder, too hard to be considered accidental.

“We have a plan, we stick to it. What’s there to talk about?”

But Arthur swallows after that, a little needlessly, and Eames thinks it would be a mistake if he didn’t go all in, even when, realistically, he’d bet against himself.

“We could talk about last night. I think you have the entirely wrong idea about me and I’d like to explain myself.”

He doesn’t see the woman with the Sig Sauer until she’s halfway across the street, looking remarkably like Mal, dark hair, devastating cheekbones, the way she holds her gun, shoulders back, head slightly cocked to the right. She shoots him cleanly in the heart and he can’t say he didn’t expect it, the explosion of pain sending him to his knees, then flat on his stomach, and he keeps his eyes trained on the polished tips of Arthur’s shoes as he loses consciousness.

He sucks in a sharp, noisy breath when he wakes, pressing the heel of one hand to his chest, right above his racing heart.

“ _Fucking_ hell, Arthur, was that really necessary?” He still feels spidery threads of pain that keep him still in his chair for a moment longer, eyes closed, back a little damp with sweat.

When he’s met with silence, he turns and finds Arthur hunched over with his elbows on his knees, the curve of his back tired and painfully vulnerable. 

“Arthur, darling—”

“What do you want from me?” He looks up and his eyes are wrecked, all but begging Eames to put him out of his misery, and it feels like another shot to the heart from which Eames won’t recover so easily. “I don’t know what you _want_ from me.”

Eames doesn’t quite know where to start so he says, after a slight pause, “Everything. I know that makes me a selfish, uncompromising bastard, but I want everything.”

And because Arthur’s finally paying attention, he adds, “I’m in love with you, if you haven’t noticed.”

The ensuing silence stretches on with Arthur in his chair and Eames in his, meters of space between them warmed slowly but steadily by a surrender and an aching awareness that makes Eames imagine that, instead of starting over, they could pick up right where they left off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the holidays just around the corner, you may not hear from me again until after the new year. I know, I'm a terrible person for leaving this hanging, but I'll try to make up for it with the last installment. In any case, Happy Holidays!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lied; there will be 11 chapters, not 10. I thought it made most sense to cut the last part into two pieces, though they'll be a little shorter. Thank you for all your lovely comments on the last one. <3

On day one of the Sharma job the monsoon rains begin to drench Mumbai. By the time they get to the warehouse, soaked to the skin after a losing battle with Arthur’s travel-sized umbrella, Arthur’s decided that he’ll be picking the jobs from now on. 

On day two Arthur loses his voice entirely to a viral infection, leaving it to Eames to reassure their extractor, brilliant but excitable, that he doesn’t need a clean bill of health to run point and run it better than anyone Sunil may or may not be entertaining as a last-minute replacement. Which Eames thinks is just as well; with Arthur sick and his job performance in question, he’d likely go the route of verbal evisceration, and Eames rather likes the brother-sister team they’ve paired up with, an imaginative, ambitious team with adorably matched names.

On day three he decides he takes it all back. They’re the worst team he’s ever worked with, and with the infernal rain that’s defeated every water-repelling contraption he’s thrown at it, Mumbai has definitely fallen out of his good graces. 

On day four he realizes why he’s so bloody irritable. With Arthur’s voice gone, he’s become the sodding messenger, which not only requires him to keep up with all the minutiae Arthur organizes in color-coded spreadsheets with tiny font and a key that needs its own spreadsheet, it also requires him to break down the information into digestible pieces for Sunil and Sunita, with Arthur narrowing his eyes whenever he thinks Eames isn’t doing it forcefully enough.

On day five he’s already at the end of his tether, popping painkillers with his morning tea and resolving to never tease Arthur about being a stick-in-the-mud ever again, at least until they retire. He has no idea how Arthur puts up with any of it because, frankly, it’s a fucking thankless job that takes most of the effort and little of the credit.

On day six he finally loses his temper, enumerating to Sunil for the fifth time the evidence in Arthur’s research of their mark’s undiagnosed post-traumatic stress that would without question rear its ugly head the deeper they go. By the time they wrap up for the night, all Eames wants to do is fall into bed, curl himself around Arthur, and just _breathe_.

“This job’s gotten me so worked up I’m starting to miss Cobb. Do you know how bloody disturbing that feels?” He jams a cigarette between his lips and fumbles through his pockets for his lighter.

Before he can find it, Arthur’s splaying a hand against the side of his face and plucking the cigarette from his mouth, turning him so they’re looking at each other, taking their first real pause since morning.

What he’s learned about Arthur in the past few days, apart from the fact that he’s constantly underappreciated, is that his eyes are remarkably, disarmingly eloquent when he wants them to be. Studying them now Eames thinks, chest tightening, that he’s never seen them quite so sentimental.

“I love you, darling, but you really must be quite mad, to keep doing what you do.”

Arthur doesn’t frown or smile, just leans in quietly to fit their mouths together so Eames can feel him saying, for the first time, soundlessly but unequivocally, _I love you, too_.

*

They take Hargrove through the dream without incident. Arthur’s projections are on their best behavior, marching about their business with Arthur-like purpose, but Eames still keeps a lookout for trouble and only secondarily because he was so unapologetically shot the last time round. 

Arthur’s subconscious has always been one of a kind. Eames has enough experience digging around in people’s heads to know that while stable dreams can be gotten with a little talent and practice, the _singular_ stability of Arthur’s dreams requires something more committed, more ruthless. It doesn’t bother Arthur like it bothers Eames, an argument he started once that Arthur summarily shut down with his mouth in a thin, hard line. It’s something of an instinct, the controlling, confining, and concealing, but it twists up Eames’s insides to imagine Arthur’s demons buried as deep as they can go and to still see shades of them, terrible and bloodthirsty, in the middle of the night, as if it’s a small price to pay for the reputation Arthur’s built. It’s why he never underestimates Arthur’s subconscious, least of all when he’s already been made into target practice.

His heart is actually racing a little when the timer pulls them out, which he supposes is telling of just how worked up he is; it was a simple exercise for fuck’s sake. His one consolation is that Hargrove looks considerably more shaken, reduced to a boy sitting at the grownups’ table, tongue tripping over his reassurances of the company’s full cooperation. Though Eames suspects that’s partly owing to Arthur’s unparalleled ability to make a man piss himself with a few carefully chosen words and a well-timed smile, which, more often than not, makes Eames’s life easier than he probably deserves.

“So how long do we think this full cooperation of theirs will last?” He gives it a day for Hargrove’s ego to catch up with him, two if they’re lucky.

“Long enough for us to insure ourselves against any more surprises.” Arthur’s collecting the IV lines, changing the needles, rearranging the vials, all with an inordinate amount of attention, and Eames is about to take him decisively by the forearms and make him _stop_ , when his mobile goes off.

“Bugger it.” It’s Mal, of course it is, endowed with her uncanny sense of inopportune moments, and he considers letting it go to voicemail, fully aware of her irrational hatred of unanswered calls, before picking up on the fourth ring.

“I haven’t heard a word from you,” she accuses immediately, which means she’s already tried Arthur and Arthur’s remained steadfastly silent. 

He slips outside and walks out onto the dock, easing himself down onto the edge to let his feet dangle just above the water. He looks out at the glass behemoths crowding the shoreline, cold, colorless, and dull, and feels a fierce longing for Paris.

“Only because everything’s going swimmingly,” he lies. It’s spectacularly unconvincing but it saves him the breath of telling the much more long-winded truth.

She pauses, probably deciding how best to call his bluff, then simply settles on: “Not one of your better efforts, my dear.”

“Yea, well,” he digs out his packet of cigarettes, crushing it in his hand when he finds it empty, “I can’t be perfect all the bloody time.”

“I suppose this means Arthur hasn’t miraculously recovered some time in the last five days.”

“God forbid, because that would be too easy.” He sets his elbows on his knees and stares into the murky depths of the East River. “ _To live is to suffer._ Isn’t that in the Bible?”

“No, that’s Nietzsche.” He can hear Mal smiling. “Don’t tell me you’re in the throes of a spiritual crisis.”

“I’d never give my father the satisfaction,” he says humorlessly. “If I were in any sort of crisis, it would strictly be of the Arthur variety.”

Mal sighs. “Has it ever occurred to you that if I knew he couldn’t keep you on your toes, Liverpool would have never happened? I have a sixth sense about these things, you know.”

“That’s because you’re mad,” he counters without much conviction.

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” And then she adds, in case he insists on being smart about it. “ _Not_ the Bible.”

“Hey, Georgie’s back. We should start running some tests.”

Arthur’s standing over him, late-morning shadow joining his on the water’s surface, edges rippling gently.

“Is that Arthur’s mellifluous voice I hear? Tell him he’s a little shit for ignoring my calls and it’ll come back to bite him in his unfairly attractive behind.”

“Better yet, you can tell him yourself.” Eames turns and hands Arthur the phone, squinting up at the stoicism that morphs so beautifully into amusement as Arthur hums agreeably, looking to the opposite shore then back at Eames, eyes steady and searching.

“No. Uh-huh. I know. You’ve made that pretty clear. Yea. Okay. Bye.” 

He hangs up and returns the phone, keeping his hand outstretched until Eames uses it to pull himself up, unable to keep from brushing his thumb purposefully against Arthur’s palm before he lets go, because it’s warm and calloused and perfect.

“We better get back,” Arthur says needlessly, tucking his hands into his pockets and turning away, throat working against whatever it was he couldn’t bring himself to say.

Eames just stares at the back of Arthur’s head and follows, smiling, knowing that this isn’t Arthur being resistant, or even pigheaded. It’s Arthur exercising caution, because he’s painfully more risk averse with his heart than with his money or his life. With this Arthur, Eames can imagine that, perhaps, they’ve finally converged again after walking along opposite sides of a gaping abyss.

Georgie’s inserting the new vials when they walk in, absently chewing on her lower lip.

“So what do we know going in?” Eames plucks one up from the square black box next to the PASIV and holds it up to the light. The liquid is a pale, clear blue that clings to the glass a little when he swirls it, thicker than water, slightly thinner than blood.

“It’s not a Somnacin derivative, completely different chemical formula. Best to not run the risk of triggering Andreev’s memory of the last job.” Georgie frowns as she fiddles with the dosage level. “It doesn’t interact with antidepressants like Somnacin does so it’s been getting popular. Zelda’s found some variance in stability, probably because it puts you in a deeper sleep. The first level will feel more like a second level. I reckon we’ll take it slow and easy today.”

“We were talking about making the first level the Central Park Reservoir,” Arthur says, dragging over a third chair. “We can give that a try. Not much building involved, and we can be loose with the details for now.”

“I’ll stay topside this time and monitor your vitals.” Georgie pulls out two IV lines and hands them to Arthur, who walks over to Eames, taking him by the wrist to ease him down onto a chair, and Eames lets him, caught off-guard and utterly disarmed by the gentle pressure of Arthur’s fingers, the bright gleam in his eyes that asks Eames to trust him. And Eames wants to pull him down with a hand over his nape and say, _I do_ , against his mouth, over and over again until he finally _gets_ it.

Instead he says, “I never thought I’d hear you say loose and details in the same breath.”

Arthur slides the needle in, mouth twitching. “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”

The Yoshino cherries are in full bloom along the east perimeter, pale delicate pink rising and bowing in the breeze. Across the water the cityscape isn’t quite filled in yet, with the odd gap here and there, discontinuities a dreamer would only notice if he was looking for them. 

Eames steps aside to let two joggers by, perfectly toned in their perfectly fitting running gear.

“You’ve got to do something about your projections, darling. They’re far too attractive for their own good.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows, indicating that that was in no way a worthwhile contribution and he won’t deign to respond, then turns to lean his elbows against the steel fence. A building rises in the distance without a sound, fitting snugly between two symmetrical high-rises like a well-played Tetris piece.

“Feels stable so far. I’d even say it’s easier to build. Almost like the dream space is smoother. Try it.”

Eames picks a squat, sad-looking structure and stretches it until it’s taller than its companions, then adds a steeple for good measure.

“Pretty tame by your standards, isn’t it?” Arthur glances at Eames sideways, mouth tentatively teasing, a single lock of hair falling across his forehead, loosened by the wind picking up from the west, and all Eames can think about is that he could’ve lost this, that he could still lose this if he’s not careful.

“I could add a Christmas hat.”

“Don’t you dare.” 

Arthur’s already turned away but he’s smiling now, brightening with the kind of contentment that reminds Eames of just how stunning it looks on him.

“Let’s see what—” Arthur stops short. 

The surface of the reservoir ripples, outward from the exact center as if there’s a disturbance directly underneath. Then the water starts to churn, quicker, and harder, until there are waves splashing against the sides, catching the bottom of Arthur’s trousers and trickling across the jogging path.

“Bloody hell,” Eames manages to say before the fence falls in.

For one agonizingly slow moment Arthur teeters on the edge, fighting with gravity on instinct, and Eames gathers his wits just in time to yank Arthur back with a hand clamped around each arm, heart hammering in his chest.

“Jesus Christ.” 

Then entire reservoir caves in, the Manhattan skyline with it, a billion gallons of water rushing down the sides until a shoreline appears, far down below, and suddenly they’re standing on the edge of a cliff with the wind carrying in the smell of the sea. 

“Arthur,” Eames turns him around. He’s a little ashen, breaths coming in short, shallow bursts, eyes unfocused, and Eames grips his arms a little harder, in an effort to hold Arthur together or maybe just to stay his own panic, “Arthur, can you still control it?”

“I—” Arthur shudders violently, eyes widening at something past Eames’s shoulder.

When Eames turns, it’s not New York he finds. It’s Beijing. The chaos, the noise, the smells, sprawled out before them, unadulterated and unmistakable. Except there are missing pieces, chunks of streets, sides of buildings, like someone got too lazy to finish the puzzle. And still the projections mill about, unaware and uninterested. 

He’s seen subconsciouses go rogue, pull unplanned elements, incongruities into the dream, but he’s never seen anything like this. A dream taking on a life of its own, rupturing into this loud, structured chaos, and it’s fascinating but mostly terrifying. He takes a messy breath and stares at the street vendors, thoughts racing. Arthur must be reacting poorly to the new compound but Georgie hasn’t kicked them out of the dream, which means nothing’s visibly wrong topside. Yet. They probably shouldn’t wait for the timer. They should probably get the fuck out.

“I don’t understand what’s happening. I can’t—” Arthur says, hands coming up to dig into his temples, eyes squeezing shut.

The high-rises start to sink, streets splitting and crumbling to make way for narrow, curving canals. The spires of Saint Mark’s Basilica rise in the distance.

Arthur’s heaving for breath now, nearly doubled over, fingers clutching his hair, and Eames dreams up a gun.

“I think it’s time we wake up.” His voice is shaking almost as hard as the hand he places against Arthur’s cheek to coax him to stand upright. Arthur’s fingers fumble and curl into the front of his shirt, eyes still tightly shut.

“No, no, wait, I can’t wake up, I can’t, not yet.”

The ground beneath them trembles, and suddenly Venice is gone. They’re standing in a hotel room now, high above Dubai, with no ceiling or windows, just wide open space under a darkening sky. The wind whips around them, smelling like a sandstorm. Arthur’s still breathing noisily through his mouth, still clutching onto Eames like he might blow away if he lets go, and Eames, even knowing it’s a dream, can’t help thinking this might be the end of the world.

“Arthur,” he slides his hand down to Arthur’s nape before curving his other one against Arthur’s waist, deciding it wouldn’t be such a terrible way to go, “Arthur, look at me.”

Arthur gasps sharply, eyes flying open, bright and wet and _pained_ , saturated with the magnificent, heartrending shades of everything Eames has fought tooth and nail to resurrect.

And Eames finds his voice for just long enough to say, “ _darling_ ,” before the floor collapses.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually can't believe I've finished. I know the length of this PALES in comparison to some of the magnificent works out there, but it's the longest thing I've ever written. Usually my pace and my commitment are fucking terrible when it comes to chaptered fic, so I really can't believe I've finished. And I owe a lot of it to the lovely and encouraging comments I've gotten along the way, so thank you for that. I really hope this last part is everything you hoped for, or at least a little.
> 
> And if you're a total, TOTAL sap like I am (and clearly you are if you've stuck with this for this long), feel free to listen to _Make You Feel My Love_ before/while/after reading this. Any version, although I very much enjoy Adele's.

Eames wakes up to the sight of Arthur drooling onto his pillow and hogging all the sheets, not to actually use, god forbid, but to tangle around his legs until he looks half-man, half-mummy. It’s when he’s sleeping that he forgets his unswerving, life-long commitment to looking dignified at all times, and Eames finds it utterly delightful. He gets especially cavalier when they get back from pulling a long job, because, for all his willingness to pull all nighters, mainly to appease his truly terrifying work ethic, he would much rather sleep. In fact, Eames is pretty sure he’s never met anyone who enjoyed the act of sleeping more than Arthur, and it’s a paradox among the many paradoxes comprising Arthur that Eames fully intends to spend the rest of his life figuring out.

He reaches out to place a hand against Arthur’s hip, running his fingers slowly, light as a feather, down Arthur’s thigh before hooking two into a strip of sheet, bound a little more loosely than the others, to extricate it from Arthur’s greedy clutches. He tugs experimentally and watches Arthur breathe, knowing full well that he might look dead to the world when he sleeps but he’s perfectly aware the moment someone’s planning to slit his throat, or steal his sheets, like he has some sort of subconscious stealth radar sweeping a 30-meter radius. Eames really wouldn’t put it past him.

Then Arthur shifts, redistributing his weight as he wipes the back of a hand over his mouth and curves his foot under Eames’s knee, looking for leverage. The first time they played this game, Arthur was so sure he could flip Eames off the bed before Eames could pull the sheets off his body. The current score stands at a draw.

This time, though, Eames has something else in mind. With the last two weeks dominated by long hours and a fucking incompetent for an architect, he’s barely even properly _touched_ Arthur, who apparently much rather prefers sleeping over having sex with his husband. So Eames grabs two lengths of sheet, quick as lightning, having already mapped out the logistics, and _yanks_ , making Arthur yelp and flail for balance before he ends up sprawled, utterly undignified, over Eames.

“Asshole,” Arthur mumbles into the curve of his neck, then hoists himself up a little, narrowing his eyes to little effect given his deliciously rumpled state, “you only did that because you knew I’d win. Which makes you a cheater.”

“I prefer to see it as playing to my strengths.” 

Eames nips at Arthur’s collarbone and digs his fingers into Arthur’s back, about ready to flip him over and fuck him into the mattress because he’s already hard and rocking into the crease of Eames’s thigh, breath stuttering a little, teeth scraping over his lower lip.

“You could write a textbook on bullshitting, you know that?”

Eames fumbles for the lube with one hand, knocking over the alarm clock and a glass of water, while he spreads Arthur’s legs with the other. 

“And I’d use the royalties to fund your extravagant wardrobe—these _fucking_ sheets, I’m being cock-blocked by bloody _bed sheets_ , Arthur, _fuck_ this.”

Arthur’s eyes are _sparkling_ with mirth but he has the common decency to try to keep a straight face as he repositions himself until he’s straddling Eames’s hips, shucking the sheets off with one efficient pull, fucking show off, then plucking the lube out of Eames’s hand.

“Well we can’t have that, now can we.” 

Eames can only watch as Arthur stretches himself with two eager fingers, then three, eyes fixed on Eames, dark and hot and hellbent, before wrapping a firm hand around the base of Eames’s cock and taking it in his mouth, swallowing and sucking, and Eames chokes on a groan.

“ _Christ_ , I’m—a little embarrassed to say we won’t get far if you keep that up,” he gets out through gritted teeth. Then Arthur removes his mouth and impales himself on Eames in one swift, practiced motion, making his eyes fly open, fingers grabbing for Arthur’s hips.

“Oh, _fuck_.” He’s not sure who said it, or if they both did, but he definitely whimpers a little, at the tightness, the _heat_ that makes it almost fucking impossible to breathe, eyes glazing over then refocusing when Arthur bends over to kiss him, slow and achingly thorough, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. 

“You feel,” Arthur plants both palms on his chest, rising up and swallowing a moan, “so fucking good.”

Then he starts to move his hips, setting a hard, relentless rhythm, and all Eames can do is let Arthur ride him, drink Arthur in, greedily, feeling the way he always does that this might be his last chance because he’s never really had anything he was terrified of losing. He drinks in the broken sounds catching in Arthur’s bared throat, the sight of his muscles shifting, straining to take Eames in deeper, the expanse of pale skin patterned with scars, some less forgiving than others, compelling Eames to touch, to mend, to _want_. And he finds the wherewithal to grab onto Arthur’s waist and flip them over with a sudden, calculated shift in momentum.

“Fuck, _Eames_ , I can’t—oh, God, oh, _fuck_ —” Arthur’s breathless and incoherent and _keening_ as he wraps his legs around Eames, heels digging in hard. 

“That’s it, darling, hold on tight,” Eames says against his mouth before licking in to swallow his sounds, taking his hands to press them into the mattress, and Arthur just arches his spine a little and allows it, allows Eames to spread him open and split him apart, and, Christ, if it doesn’t always destroy Eames a little, seeing Arthur so willingly vulnerable.

It takes three more uncoordinated thrusts, hard enough to rattle the headboard, for Arthur to come and Eames to follow, Arthur clenching greedily around him, saying his name like it’s the only word he remembers.

They keep still for a moment longer, with Eames mouthing the scar on Arthur’s shoulder and Arthur brushing his thumb absently across the back of Eames’s hand, over and over again.

“I propose we never get out of bed. Although the sheets will have to go. In fact, I hereby establish a no bed sheets rule in this house.”

Eames lifts his head to look down at Arthur, all smiles and dimples and contentment. He’s learned that the best time to ask entirely unreasonable things of Arthur is right after sex, when he’s the most generous and the least sarcastic.

“Don’t be a drama queen. And I can’t. I’m meeting Jeanne at ten.”

Eames frowns. “I still don’t see why we pay someone to make terrible investments on our behalf when we’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.”

“I’m not gonna fire him because he couldn’t predict a global financial crisis.” Arthur’s logic could be terribly annoying sometimes. “Anyway, you just hate his guts because he hit on me that _one_ time.”

“As far as I know.” Eames reaches down and pinches Arthur’s arse, making him yelp. “Wear something outrageously hideous today.”

“One of your shirts then,” Arthur says, innocently, then, with a calf hooked around Eames’s knee and a hand around his neck, kisses him before he can protest, wet, warm and just a little regretful. “I’ll be done by noon, and then we can come back to bed and never get out of it for as long as you want.”

Arthur showers, then leaves to get to his meeting at promptly ten o’clock.

The hospital calls at two in the afternoon.

*

As soon as they wake up, Arthur turns to one side and throws up, one hand braced on the desk beside his chair.

“Bloody hell, what happened down there?”

Eames yanks out his needle, hands shaking, and fumbles for his poker chip. It falls from his pocket and clatters to the ground, and he just stares at it, trying to breathe, tasting sand in his mouth and feeling the world cave in under him with Arthur in his arms.

He hears Arthur heave and cough, spitting sick out of his mouth.

“My body doesn’t seem to like the new compound,” Arthur says faintly, if only because Georgie deserves an explanation and Eames can’t seem to find the words.

When he finally turns, Arthur’s staring straight ahead, chest heaving, swallowing and squeezing his eyes shut like he might be sick again.

“We’ll figure out a way to work around it,” Eames says to no one in particular, testing his grip on reality. 

Arthur looks at him then, and it’s the way he used to, the way he _should_ , like Eames knows him better than he knows himself, and says, “I need to get some air.”

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stands, swaying a little on his feet before walking out. 

“Christ, can this job be a bigger disaster?” Georgie runs a hand through her hair in frustration as Eames pockets his poker chip, feeling a twinge of guilt seeing her like this, because as much as he wants her to pull it off he doesn’t _care_ about the job. He came into it not caring, and maybe if he were a better person, he wouldn’t have taken it in the first place, but he’s undeniably not. He’s pretended, sometimes successfully, sometimes terribly, to be many things, but better, _good_ , has never been one of them.

“I’ll see if he’s all right.”

The dock is busier now that the tourists have started flocking in and Arthur, standing motionless in the spot they occupied a half hour ago, looks utterly out of place in his Savile Row suit, a little terrifyingly like an extraordinary figment of Eames’s imagination planted in entirely ordinary circumstances.

Eames reaches out to touch before he speaks, just to make sure, hand settling on Arthur’s shoulder, thumb rubbing against the hand-stitched seam of Arthur’s jacket. 

It’s only when Arthur turns that Eames sees he’s crying, soundlessly, without putting up a fight, blinking and letting the tears fall, licking at the ones that catch on his lips. And for a moment Eames can only watch them, clinging to Arthur’s lashes, dripping off his chin and onto his shirt, can only think he’s never seen Arthur like this, this wretched and beautiful, powerless and still having all the power in the world to break his heart.

Then he’s bringing both hands up to cup Arthur’s face, wiping at Arthur’s wet cheeks, knees weak but still admirably doing their part to keep him upright.

“Tell me I’m not going mad. Though, if I am, I’m strangely okay with it.” He’s a little choked up, in danger of turning into a bloody mess watching Arthur pull himself together, throat working and mouth parting on a wet exhale.

“Sorry to break it to you but that train left the station a long time ago.” Arthur’s smiling now, voice hoarse and low and _fond_ , and Eames just holds on a little tighter.

“ _God_ , Arthur.” He brings their foreheads together, trying to time his breaths, sharp and shattered, with Arthur’s, because otherwise he won’t be able to breathe at all, it’s finally hitting him, one massive tidal wave after another, beating against his back, trying to push him to his knees. “God, I’ve _missed_ you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, waiting out the storm. Arthur slides both hands around his waist and splays them across his back.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says quietly, even when none of it is his fault and Eames doesn’t correct him.

“So am I, darling,” he leans back an inch, smiling a little, dragging a thumb against Arthur’s mouth, “so am I.”

Then he kisses Arthur and it’s wet, and salty, and warm, Arthur’s tongue sliding lazily against his like they have all the time in the world, and his moving with a little more urgency, because he hasn’t shaken off the fear yet that it’s a promise neither of them should be making.

Eames kisses him, and kisses him, until his lungs are on fire and Arthur’s trying to suck in air and keep his mouth on Eames at the same time, hands now underneath his jacket, the heat of his palms _burning_ through Eames’s shirt and into his skin, down to his bones.

When they finally pull apart, Arthur’s clinging to him looking dazed and a little wrecked, eyes lazy, mouth trembling, and god, yes, he’s missed this, too, this Arthur who doesn’t mind letting on that Eames can undo him without trying very hard at all. 

“I think we might be making a scene,” he says, although he can’t be bothered to check. Not with Arthur smiling like he has no intention of stopping.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.” 

It’s really not what Arthur thinks, but Eames has let him think it because, frankly, the truth is a little embarrassing. It’s not that he’s some sort of exhibitionist, although he is a bit, or that he wants to show Arthur off, although he does a bit. With Arthur he just can’t seem to keep his hands to himself. Touching Arthur is uncomplicated and instinctive and _pleasurable_ , like having a cigarette after waking up in the morning or floating on the sea and being carried to shore on the tide. And Arthur’s never encouraged or discouraged public displays of affection. Mostly he’s accustomed to doing exactly what he wants without giving a buggering fuck what anyone else thinks, because he found, a long time ago, that life’s too short to do any less, and it’s suited Eames just fine.

So he just murmurs, “I like laying claim to what’s mine,” and watches heat flare in Arthur’s eyes.

“I’ve been a pretty big asshole.” Arthur gently pries Eames’s hands from his face and rubs at Eames’s right cheek with his thumb.

“Par for the course, love.” Eames sniffles, loudly, and, bloody hell, he really needs to get a grip. Blubbering idiot isn’t a good look on him, not that he’s ever had much opportunity to try it out. “I knew exactly what I was getting into when I married you, despite what you might think.”

Arthur’s dimples are delightfully unapologetic. “That gives me very little incentive to ever be nice to you.”

Eames hopes he looks sufficiently appalled. “Darling, if I wanted _nice_ , I’d go have tea with my mother.” He takes Arthur’s hand and brings it to his lips, nipping at each knuckle. “You’re brilliant and infuriating and remarkable and terrifying, but, I’m not sorry to say, you will never, ever be nice.”

Arthur’s quiet, jaw clenching and loosening, eyes so sharp and bright it hurts Eames a little to look, and it’s all the more reason to keep looking. He extricates his hand and splays it along Eames’s jaw, shifting against the stubble there, thumb pressing into his lower lip, studying him, and studying him, as if committing Eames to a memory he’ll go to hell and back to keep alive and untouched.

“You’re so sappy I can’t fucking stand it sometimes,” his mouth says, while his eyes say something else.

“You’re also a bloody terrible liar.” In fact, Eames has made a hobby out of compiling a mental list of all the things Arthur’s terrible at—lying, sitting still for more than five minutes, doing the dishes, articulating his feelings because he thinks Eames can read his bloody mind. It’s not a very long list yet, but it’s an important one. It’s all the things that fall haphazardly into the open when Arthur’s not quite paying attention, the kinds of things that get strewn around over time and make life feel messy and unmanageable and fucking _impossible_ , and tell Eames, when he remembers to stop fighting it, just how lucky he is to have it.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t try to be good at it?” Arthur raises his eyebrows, faintly insulted. “You don’t have a goddamn monopoly on lying.”

“No. Not when I have you around to keep me honest,” Eames admits, feigning regret. “It would be an atrociously poor business model.”

“Jesus,” Arthur looks utterly won over, even if he doesn’t sound like it, “I settled down with an honest thief. I don’t know if that’s a crowning achievement or a complete fuck-up.”

“ _Darling_ ,” Eames says, grinning from ear to ear now, “that is, possibly, the most flattering thing you’ve ever said about me. I must be dreaming.”

And then Arthur _laughs_ , the sound low and so lovely the loss of it is acute when it’s caught and taken away by the wind rising over the water.

“No, we’re awake,” Arthur tells him, voice heavy with relief, as if he’s already wasted far too much of his life dreaming. “We’re wide awake.”

Eames feels something overriding his instinct to check, a precise weight pinning down the rules of the universe. The wind blows through their hair and their jackets, and Eames thinks there’s only really one more thing that needs saying.

“ _Le vent se lève_.” He smiles at Arthur, and Arthur fits his hand against the curve of Eames’s neck, pressing in to reply against Eames’s mouth, as if he’s written it just for them:

“ _Il faut tenter de vivre_.”


End file.
